Changes to bools under Numexpr
Ivan Vilata i Balaguer
ivilata at carabos.com
Fri Oct 27 02:21:18 CDT 2006
En/na Colin J. Williams ha escrit:
> Ivan Vilata i Balaguer wrote:
>> Hi all. The attached diff makes some changes to Numexpr support for
>> booleans. The changes and their rationale are below.
>>
>> 1. New ``True`` and ``False`` boolean constants. This is so that 1 and
>> 0 are always proper integer constants. It is also for completeness,
>> but I don't envision any usage for them that couldn't be expressed
>> without the constants.
>>
> I'm puzzled.
> Python already has constants True and False of the bool type. bool is a
> subclass of the int type.
> Any instance of the bool type can be converted to the int type.
> >>> a=1==0
> >>> type(a)
> <type 'bool'>
> >>> int(a)
> 0
> >>> a
> False
> >>>
>
> Colin W.
>
>> 2. The only comparisons supported with booleans are ``==`` and ``!=``,
>> so that you can compare boolean variables. Just as NumPy supports
>> complex order comparisons and Numexpr doesn't, so goes for bools.
>> Being relatively new, I think there is no need to keep
>> integer-boolean compatibility in Numexpr. What was the meaning of
>> ``True > False`` or ``2 > True`` anyway?
Well, the ``True`` and ``False`` constants where not previously
supported in Numexpr because they had to be defined somewhere. Now they
are.
Regarding the Python int and bool types and their relationships, it is a
very elegant solution introduced in Python 2.3 since previous versions
didn't have a proper boolean type, so the 0 and 1 ints where used for
that. What I'm proposing here is, since Numexpr has a recent story and
most probably there isn't much code affected by the change, why not
define the boolean type as a purely logical one and leave its numeric
compatibility issues out? By the way, it simplifies Numexpr's virtual
machine (less casting opcodes).
I admit again this looks a little baffling, of course, but I don't think
it would mean many noticeable changes to the user.
Regards,
::
Ivan Vilata i Balaguer >qo< http://www.carabos.com/
Cárabos Coop. V. V V Enjoy Data
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