[Numpy-discussion] Unexpected integer overflow handling

[Zachary Pincus]

Hello all,

On my (older) version of numpy (1.0.4.dev3896), I found several  
oddities in the handling of assignment of long-integer values to  
integer arrays:

In : numpy.array([2**31], dtype=numpy.int8)
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call  
last)
/Users/zpincus/<ipython console>
ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence.

While this might be reasonable to be an error condition, the precise  
error raised seems not quite right! But not all overflow errors are  
caught in this way:

In : numpy.array([2**31-1], dtype=numpy.int8)
Out: array([-1], dtype=int8)

As above, numpy is quite happy allowing overflows; it just breaks  
when doing a python long-int to int conversion. The conversion from  
numpy-long-int to int does the "right thing" though (if by "right  
thing" you mean "allows silent overflow", which is a matter of  
discussion elsewhere right now...):

In : numpy.array(numpy.array([2**31], dtype=numpy.int64),  
dtype=numpy.int8)
Out: array([0], dtype=int8)

At least on item assignment, the overflow exception is less odd:

In : a = numpy.empty(shape=(1,), dtype=numpy.int8)
In : a[0] = 2**31
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---
OverflowError                             Traceback (most recent call  
last)
/Users/zpincus/<ipython console>
OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int

Things work right with array element assignment:
In : a[0] = numpy.array([2**31], dtype=numpy.int64)[0]

But break again with array scalars, and with the strange ValueError  
again!
In : a[0] = numpy.array(2**31, dtype=numpy.int64)
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
---
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call  
last)
/Users/zpincus/<ipython console>
ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence.

Note that non-long-int-to-int array scalar conversions work:
In : a[0] = numpy.array(2**31-1, dtype=numpy.int64)

Is this still the case for the current version of numpy?

Best,
Zach