On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.br...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 7:32 AM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote: >> Maybe we should go through and rename "order" to something more descriptive >> in each case, so we'd have >> a.reshape(..., index_order="C") >> a.copy(memory_order="F") >> etc.? > > That seems like a good idea. If you are proposing it, I am "+1".
Well, I'm just throwing it out there as an idea, but if people like it, nothing better turns up, and someone implements it, then I'm not going to say no... >> This way if you just bumped into these while reading code, it would still be >> immediately obvious that they were dealing with totally different concepts. >> Compare to reading along without the docs and seeing >> a.reshape(..., order="Z") >> a.copy(order="C") >> That'd just leave me even more baffled than the current system -- I'd start >> thinking that "Z" and "C" somehow were different options for the same order= >> option, so they must somehow mean ways of ordering elements? > > I don't think you'd be more baffled than the current system, which, as > you say, conflates two orthogonal concepts. Rather, I think it would > cause the user to stop, as they should, and consider what concept > order is using in this case. > > I don't find it difficult to explain this: > > There are two different but related concepts of 'order' > > 1) The memory layout of the array > 2) The index ordering used to unravel the array > > If you see 'Z' or 'N" for 'order' - that refers to index ordering. > If you see 'C' or 'F" for order - that refers to memory layout. Sure, you can write it down like this, but compare to this system: If you see 'Z' or 'N" for 'order' - that refers to memory ordering. If you see 'C' or 'F" for order - that refers to index layout. Now suppose I forget which system we actually use -- how do you remember which system is which? It's totally arbitrary. Now I have even more things to remember. And I'm certainly not going to work out this distinction just from seeing these used once or twice in someone else's code. This is like observing that if I say "go North" then it's ambiguous about whether I want you to drive or walk, and concluding that we need new words for the directions depending on what sort of vehicle you use. So "go North" means drive North, "go htuoS" means walk North, etc. Totally silly. Makes much more sense to have one set of words for directions, and then make clear from context what the directions are used for -- "drive North", "walk North". Or "iterate C-wards", "store F-wards". "C" and "Z" mean exactly the same thing -- they describe a way of unraveling a cube into a straight line. The difference is what we do with the resulting straight line. That's why I'm suggesting that the distinction should be made in the name of the argument. -n _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
