[Numpy-discussion] Index array confusion...

[Todd Miller]

Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:

>Todd Miller <jmiller at stsci.edu>:
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>[snip]
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>>What I'm saying is that in the future it will work correctly.  :)
>>    
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>OK :)
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>>Most likely as you suggest,  but I haven't really looked at the code, 
>>just the rather sickening results.
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>Well, what I was asking about was really what you meant by "correct".
>My interpretation of "correct" here was that only tuples and slices
>would be allowed as indexes.
>
This actually worked as you expected in numarray-0.3.6.  The current 
behavior is a casualty of optimization to C.

>
>BTW: I found something else that I think is rather odd:
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>>>>x = [0, 0, 0]
>>>>y = [1, 1, 1]
>>>>p = 1
>>>>x[p:], y[p:] = y[p:], x[p:]
>>>>x, y
>>>>        
>>>>
>([0, 1, 1], [1, 0, 0])
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>>>>x = array([0, 0, 0])
>>>>y = array([1, 1, 1])
>>>>x[p:], y[p:] = y[p:], x[p:]
>>>>x, y
>>>>        
>>>>
>(array([0, 1, 1]), array([1, 1, 1]))
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>This seems like a bug to me. The assignment ought to swap the tails of
>
Numeric does this as well,  so I would not call it a bug,  but  I agree 
that it is unfortunate.

>the sequences, as is the case with lists, but with numeric arrays,
>some weird form of overwriting occurs. I guess this may be an
>optimization (i.e. to avoid making copies), but it is rather
>
I think you're correct here.   This behavior is a consequence of the 
fact that array slices are views and not copies.  To fix it,  just say:

x[p:], y[p:] = y[p:].copy(), x[p:].copy()

>confusing. What do you think?
>
The manual should probably document this as a gotcha, and we might want 
to consider adding an exchange ufunc which can do the swap without a 
temporary.   I doubt the cost of exchange is worth it though.

Thanks for the feedback,
Todd