Issue 910986: copy.copy fails for array.array (original) (raw)

Python version 2.3.3 under WindowsXP Home Edition

The standard library "copy" does not work with the standard library "array".

import copy import array x = array.array('c', 'abcdef') y = copy.copy(x) Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in ? File "/usr/lib/python2.3/copy.py", line 95, in copy return _reconstruct(x, rv, 0) File "/usr/lib/python2.3/copy.py", line 338, in _reconstruct y = callable(*args) File "/usr/lib/python2.3/copy_reg.py", line 92, in newobj return cls.new(cls, *args) TypeError: array() takes at least 1 argument (0 given)

The same thing happens for copy.deepcopy.

Judging from the TypeError details, it appears that copy.copy assumes a new object of the same type as its input argument can be created with no arguments, but array.array requires at least one argument (describing the type of items in the array).

array.array should have a custom method added to make it work smoothly with copy.copy.

Documentation for copy.copy should be clearer about the requirements on the type of its input argument.