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

Robert Kern robert.kern at gmail.com
Fri Jun 30 15:54:30 EDT 2006

Scott Ransom wrote:

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.

I don't mind arange(10.0) so much, now that it exists. I would mind, a lot, about arange(10) returning a float64 array. Similarity to the builtin range() is much more important in my mind than an arbitrary "consistency" with ones() and zeros().

It's arange(0.0, 1.0, 0.1) that I think causes the most problems with arange and floats.

-- Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco

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