[Numpy-discussion] *= operator not intuitive

[Paul Anton Letnes]

Hi!

This little snippet of code tricked me (in a more convoluted form). The *= operator does not change the datatype of the left hand side array. Is this intentional? It did fool me and throw my results quite a bit off. I always assumed that 'a *= b' means exactly the same as 'a = a * b' but this is clearly not the case!

Paul.

++++++++++++++++++
>>> from numpy import *
>>> a = arange(10)
>>> b = linspace(0,1,10)
>>> a
array([0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])
>>> b
array([ 0.        ,  0.11111111,  0.22222222,  0.33333333,  0.44444444,
       0.55555556,  0.66666667,  0.77777778,  0.88888889,  1.        ])
>>> a * b
array([ 0.        ,  0.11111111,  0.44444444,  1.        ,  1.77777778,
       2.77777778,  4.        ,  5.44444444,  7.11111111,  9.        ])
>>> a *= b
>>> a
array([0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9])