On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 5:54 PM, Chris Barker <chris.bar...@noaa.gov> wrote: > > This is why I see no downside to latin-1 -- if you don't use the > 127 code > points, it's the same thing -- if you do, you get some extra handy > characters. The only difference is that a proper ascii type would not let > you store anything above 127 at all -- why restrict ourselves?
IMO the extra characters aren't the most compelling argument for latin1 over ascii. Latin1 gives the nice assurance that if some jerk *does* give me an "ascii" file that somewhere has some byte with the 8th bit set, then I can still load the data and fix things by hand. This is trickier if numpy just refuses to touch the data, blowing up with an exception when I try. In general it's easy to create numpy arrays containing arbitrary bitpatterns, so it's nice to have some strategy for what to do with them. -n -- Nathaniel J. Smith Postdoctoral researcher - Informatics - University of Edinburgh http://vorpus.org _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion