[Numpy-discussion] Subclassing NumArray: _PROTOTYPE flag issue

[Nadav H. <na...@vi...>]

For a simulation project I am working on I've subclasses ArrayType. I 
was able to do much of my intentions until in one place when I tried to 
make an array from a list of arrays I got an error message:

.
.
.
  File 
"/usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/numarraycore.py", line 
325, in array
    return fromlist(sequence, type, shape)
  File 
"/usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/numarraycore.py", line 
212, in fromlist
    a = a.astype(type)
  File 
"/usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/numarraycore.py", line 
630, in astype
    retarr = self.__class__(buffer=None, shape=self._shape, type=type)
TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'buffer'

The analysis of the code showed that:

   1. The NumArray class method definitions depends on the _PROTOTYPE flag
   2. The post-mortem debugging showed that when the error flagged, the
      value of the variable _PROTOTYPE was 0

In a stand alone script there was no problem to do the list-> array 
conversion:

 >>> import numarray as N
 >>> import NumImage as NI        # My module with the derived class
 >>> a = N.arange(4)
 >>> ia = NI.Cimage(N.arange(4))  # CImage is a derivative of NumImage
 >>> a
array([0, 1, 2, 3])
 >>> ia
Cimage([0, 1, 2, 3])
 >>> N.array([a+i for i in range(3)])
array([[0, 1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3, 4],
       [2, 3, 4, 5]])
 >>> N.array([ia+i for i in range(3)])  # OK here, but failed as a part 
of a complex script
Cimage([[0, 1, 2, 3],
       [1, 2, 3, 4],
       [2, 3, 4, 5]])


My questions are:

   1. Is this flag is in use? If I set it to 0 will I be able to derive
      a class from the "C code"?
   2. Any intelligent solution?

  Nadav.