[Numpy-discussion] Thoughts on an ndarray super-class

[Travis O. <oli...@ie...>]

The bigndarray class is going to disappear (probably in the next release 
of NumPy).  It was a stop-gap measure as the future of 64-bit fixes in 
Python was unclear.  Python 2.5 will have removed the 64-bit limitations 
that led to the bigndarray and so it will be removed.  

I have been thinking, however, of replacing it with a super-class that 
does not define the dimensions or strides.   

In other words, the default array would be just a block of memory.  The 
standard array would inherit from the default and add dimension and 
strides pointers.

I was thinking that this might make it easier for sub-classes using 
fixed-sized dimensions and strides.  I'm not sure if that would actually 
be useful, but since I was thinking about the disappearance of the 
bigndarray, I thought I would ask for comments.

-Travis