Greg Ewing wrote: > Travis Oliphant wrote: > >> For what it's worth, NumPy also defines a data-type object which it >> uses to describe the fundamental data-type of an array. In the context >> of this thread it is also yet another way to describe a binary-packed >> structure in Python. > > Maybe there should be a separate module providing > a data-packing facility that ctypes, NumPy, etc. > can all use (perhaps with their own domain-specific > extensions to it). > > It does seem rather silly to have about 3 or 4 > different incompatible ways to do almost exactly > the same thing (struct, ctypes, NumPy and now > Construct).
I agree. Especially with ctypes and struct now in the standard library. The problem, however, is that every module does something a little-bit different with the object. NumPy needs a built-in object with at least a few fields defined. The idea of "specifying the data-type" is different then it's representation to NumPy. After looking at it, I'm not particularly fond of Construct's way to specify data-types, but then again we've been developing the array interface for just this purpose and so have some biased opinions. Some kind of data-type specification would indeed be useful. NumPy needs a built-in (i.e. written in C) data-type object internally. If that builtin object were suitable generally then all the better. For details, look at http://numeric.scipy.org/array_interface (in particular the __array_descr__ field of the interface for what we came up with last year over several months of discussion. -Travis _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com