[Numpy-discussion] minor improvment to ones

[Sturla Molden]

On 1/30/2009 3:22 PM, Neal Becker wrote:

> Now what would be _really_ cool is a special array type that would represent 
> a constant array without wasting memory.

Which again is a special case of something even cooler: lazy evaluation.

This would require arrays to have immutable buffers. Then an expression 
like "a*x + y" would result in a symbolic representation of

a * x.buffer + y.buffer

Then the array could evaluate itself (it could even numexpr or a JIT 
compiler) when needed.

The scheme would be very fragile and complicated if arrays were allowed 
to have immutable data buffers like those of numpy.


Sturla Molden