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 Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Numpy-discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/numpy-discussion
