[Numpy-discussion] Array Protocol change for Python 2.6 (original) (raw)

Travis Oliphant oliphant at ee.byu.edu
Thu Jun 8 16:26:57 EDT 2006

One of the hopes for the Summer of Code project involving getting the multidimensional array object into Python 2.6 is advertisement of the array protocol or array interface.

I think one way to simplify the array protocol is simply have only one attribute that is looked to to provide access to the protocol. I would like to deprecate all the array protocol attributes except for

array_struct (perhaps we could call this array_interface but I'm happy keeping the name the same too.)

If array_struct is a CObject then it behaves as it does now.

If array_struct is a tuple then each entry in the tuple is one of the items currently obtained by an additional attribute access (except the first item is always an integer indicating the version of the protocol --- unused entries are None).

This should simplify the array interface and allow easier future changes. It should also simplify NumPy so that it doesn't have to check for multiple attributes on arbitrary objects.

I would like to eliminate all the other array protocol attributes before NumPy 1.0 (and re-label those such as array_data that are useful in other contexts --- like ctypes).

Comments?

-Travis

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