[Numpy-discussion] Time for beta1 of NumPy 1.0 (original) (raw)

Scott Ransom sransom at nrao.edu
Fri Jun 30 15:44:38 EDT 2006

On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 01:25:23PM -0600, Travis Oliphant wrote:

Robert Kern wrote:

>Whatever else you do, leave arange() alone. It should never have accepted floats >in the first place. > Actually, Robert makes a good point. arange with floats is problematic. We should direct people to linspace instead of changing the default of arange. Most new users will probably expect arange to return a type similar to Python's range which is int. ... So, I think from both a pragmatic and idealized situtation, arange should stay with the default of ints. People who want arange to return floats should be directed to linspace.

I agree that arange with floats is problematic. However, if you want, for example, arange(10.0) (as I often do), you have to do: linspace(0.0, 9.0, 10), which is very un-pythonic and not at all what a new user would expect...

I think of linspace as a convenience function, not as a replacement for arange with floats.

Scott

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