On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 09:33, Charles R Harris
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Robert Kern <[email protected]> wrote:

>> The alternative proposal would be to add a few new dtypes that are
>> NA-aware. E.g. an nafloat64 would reserve a particular NaN value
>> (there are lots of different NaN bit patterns, we'd just reserve one)
>> that would represent NA. An naint32 would probably reserve the most
>> negative int32 value (like R does). Using the NA-aware dtypes signals
>> that you are using NA values; there is no need for an additional flag.
>
> Definitely better names than r-int32. Going this way has the advantage of
> reducing the friction between R and numpy, and since R has pretty much
> become the standard software for statistics that is an important
> consideration.

I would definitely steal their choices of NA value for naint32 and
nafloat64. I have reservations about their string NA value (i.e. 'NA')
as anyone doing business in North America and other continents may
have issues with that....

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco
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