On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 10:21 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.br...@gmail.com> wrote: >> 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. > > Could you unpack that for the 'ravel' docstring? Because these > options all refer to the way of unraveling and not the memory layout > that results.
Z/C/column-major/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is a general strategy for converting between a 1-dim representation and a n-dim representation. In the case of memory storage, the 1-dim representation is the flat space of pointer arithmetic. In the case of ravel, the 1-dim representation is the flat space of a 1-dim indexed array. But the 1-dim-to-n-dim part is the same in both cases. I think that's why you're seeing people baffled by your proposal -- to them the "C" refers to this general strategy, and what's different is the context where it gets applied. So giving the same strategy two different names is silly; if anything it's the contexts that should have different names. -n _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
