[Numpy-discussion] how add new attribute to a numpy array object ?

[Sebastian Haase]

Hi,
I have a (medical) image file.
I wrote a nice interface based on memmap using numarray.
The class design I used  was essentially to return a numarray array 
object with a new "custom" attribute giving access to special 
information about the base file.

Now with numpy I noticed that a numpy object does not allow adding new 
attributes !! (How is this ? Why ?)

Travis already suggested (replying to one of my last postings) to create 
a new sub class of numpy.ndarray.

But how do I initialize an object of my new class to be "basically 
identically to" an existing ndarray object ?
Normally I could do
class B(N.ndarray):
    pass
a=N.arange(10)
a.__class__ = B

BUT I get this error:
#>>> a.__class__ = B
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: __class__ assignment: only for heap types

What is a "heap type" ? Why ?  How can I do what I want ?

Thanks,
Sebastian Haase