Re: [Numpy-discussion] Conversion numarray/Numeric objects

[Todd M. <jm...@st...>]

Aureli Soria Frisch wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> I have developed till now all my numerical stuff using Numeric objects.
>
>
> I want to use some modules using numarray. I have tested some 
> conversion functions on Python, e.g.
>
>
> numarray.array(Numeric_object.tolist())
>
Much faster,  but less general, is:

numarray.fromstring(Numeric_object.tostring(), type=XXXX)

>
> but it seems to me a bit slow (specially for large arrays as images). 
> Is there any more ways of doing this conversion?
>
> Should I write my own conversion in C?
>
It depends on how soon you need it to be fast.    numarray 
fromlist/tolist should be implemented in C for the next release, which 
should occur within a couple months, perhaps sooner.  If you want to 
write a C extension for numarray now, the best way to do it is to use 
the Numeric compatability layer,   which essentially uses a subset of 
the Numeric C-API,  and is not likely to change.

> Which advices could you give me in order to make an smoother transition?
>
>
> Furthermore I found the web site about numarray/Numeric 
> incompatibilities very interesting. However I did not understand quite 
> well the paragraph:
>
I think that webpage is out of date.

>
> since interactively typing a.shape() or a.shape((8,8)) raise an 
> exception (Tuple object not callable). Am I misunderstanding something?
>
Actually, for python 2.2 and up,  numarray has all of those attributes 
in a Numeric compatible, Python properties based form.   So ".shape" 
get/sets the shape in numarray, just as in Numeric:

 >>> import numarray
 >>> a = numarray.arange(10)
 >>> a.shape
(10,)
 >>> a.shape = (2,5)
 >>> a.shape
(2,5)

Because of this,  the expression a.shape() that you mentioned tries to 
"call" the shape tuple returned by .shape, resulting in an exception.

Todd

-- 
Todd Miller 			jm...@st...
STSCI / SSB