[Numpy-discussion] BOF notes: Fernando's proposal: NumPy ndarray with named axes

[Lluís]

Rob Speer writes:

>> Or what I was striving for:
>> 
>>   arr.year.named[1994:2010]
>>   arr.year['1994':'2010']
>>   arr.year['1994':-3]

> So your proposal is, whenever there's an index that is not an integer,
> look it up by name, and use .named only if you want integer tick
> names? This feels too inconsistent to me. It adds a fair amount of
> confusion to save a small amount of typing. If keystrokes are that
> important, I'd rather replace "named" with something shorter than lose
> the distinction entirely.

No. I'd rather go for eliminating the 'arr.year.named', and providing only:
  * arr.__getitem__
  * arr.named.__getitem__
  * arr.<label>.__getitem__

The first being just the current ndarray.__getitem__, and the two last methods
would accept both strings and integers, assuming that names/ticks based on
integers (e.g., the 1994 above) must be provided as strings, or otherwise are
treated as good old array indexes.

Lluis

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