On 2014-10-12 16:54, Warren Weckesser wrote: > > > On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 7:57 AM, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com > <mailto:robert.k...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 11:51 PM, Warren Weckesser > <warren.weckes...@gmail.com <mailto:warren.weckes...@gmail.com>> > wrote: > > > A small wart in this API is the meaning of > > > > shuffle(a, independent=False, axis=None) > > > > It could be argued that the correct behavior is to leave the > > array unchanged. (The current behavior can be interpreted as > > shuffling a 1-d sequence of monolithic blobs; the axis argument > > specifies which axis of the array corresponds to the > > sequence index. Then `axis=None` means the argument is > > a single monolithic blob, so there is nothing to shuffle.) > > Or an error could be raised. > > > > What do you think? > > It seems to me a perfectly good reason to have two methods instead of > one. I can't imagine when I wouldn't be using a literal True or False > for this, so it really should be two different methods. > > > > I agree, and my first inclination was to propose a different method > (and I had the bikeshedding conversation with myself about the name: > "disarrange", "scramble", "disorder", "randomize", "ashuffle", some > other variation of the word "shuffle", ...), but I figured the first > thing folks would say is "Why not just add options to shuffle?" So, > choose your battles and all that. > > What do other folks think of making a separate method I'm not a fan of more methods with similar functionality in Numpy. It's already hard to overlook the existing functions and all their possible applications and variants. The axis=None proposal for shuffling all items is very intuitive.
I think we don't want to take the path of matlab: a huge amount of powerful functions, but few people know of their powerful possibilities. regards, Sebastian _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
