[Numpy-discussion] Re: Multiarray PEP

[Colin J. Williams]

Russell E. Owen wrote:

>In article <421446E3.7080202 at ee.byu.edu>,
> Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I've never had a problem with just the typecode characters although 
>>aliases (like Int16 or Short) which might be more meaningful are nice.   
>>Are shadow-classes important in this case?  To me they look a little 
>>like extra bulk with no gain.  I'd love to be educated as to why it is 
>>worth the extra effort to have a bunch of instances lying around. 
>>    
>>
>
>Instances can give you useful information. For example:
>- the number of bytes needed to represent a value
>  
>
 >>> import numarray.numarraycore as _n
 >>> a= _n.arange(9, shape= (3, 3))
 >>> print 'bytes per element:', a.itemsize()
bytes per element: 4

Alternatively:
 >>> a._type.bytes
4

>- the min and max values for that type (numarray doesn't do this yet, 
>but I really hope it'll be added someday).
>  
>
This could come from the type instance but it's not too difficult to 
determine for a given type.

>I personally dislike character codes because they are uninformative and 
>because they meaningless without the documentation.
>
>  
>
(+1)
Colin W.