[SciPy-dev] PyArray_CanCastSafely(exact,inexact) on 64-bit

[Pearu Peterson]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, Travis Oliphant wrote:

> Pearu Peterson wrote:
>
>> By the definition of can_cast, no bitwise information is lost, but
>> it is not meaningful to pass (double*)(<pointer to long array>) to a
>> numeric function, for example.
>>
>>
> But, that's never been what CanCastSafely has been used to represent.
> Perhaps we need a different function that distinguishes between
> different kinds.  Again, what are you trying to do, specifically?
>
>> Or may be I should use some different function than PyArray_CanCastSafely
>> in this situation?
>>
> I suspect so...

PyArray_CanCastSafely has been used in array_from_pyobj function (see 
fortranobject.c) to decide whether the data pointer of an input array can 
be directly passed on to the Fortran or C function:

     if ((! (intent & F2PY_INTENT_COPY))
 	&& PyArray_ITEMSIZE(arr)==descr->elsize
 	&& PyArray_CanCastSafely(arr->descr->type_num,type_num)
 	) {
       if ((intent&F2PY_INTENT_C)?PyArray_ISCARRAY(arr):PyArray_ISFARRAY(arr)) {
 	if ((intent & F2PY_INTENT_OUT)) {
 	  Py_INCREF(arr);
 	}
 	/* Returning input array */
 	return arr;
       }
     }
     /* else apply arr.astype(<type_num>) */


But I now realize that this is a incorrect usage of PyArray_CanCastSafely.

The above codelet should probably then read as

     if ((! (intent & F2PY_INTENT_COPY))
         && PyArray_ITEMSIZE(arr)==descr->elsize
         && (  (PyArray_ISINTEGER(arr) && PyTypeNum_ISINTEGER(type_num))
            || (PyArray_ISFLOAT(arr) && PyTypeNum_ISFLOAT(type_num))
            || (PyArray_ISCOMPLEX(arr) && PyTypeNum_ISCOMPLEX(type_num))
            || (PyArray_ISSTRING(arr) && PyTypeNum_ISSTRING(type_num))
            )
        ) {
     ...

though I am not sure about the STRING case, e.g. what happens when passing 
unicode arr->data to fortran character*(*) argument, for instance.

Thanks,
Pearu