I believe the Python bindings purposely return references here because that's what C++ does -- and you definitely don't want to copy the whole spec every time.
C++ has spec() and specmod() to distinguish between a const reference and a mutable reference. (It could overload spec() to have a const and non-const version, but we do it this way because some fields should NOT be changed in a live ImageBuf, so by using a different name to get the mutable copy, I hoped that it would be obvious that it was something you needed to be careful with.) Python doesn't really have the "const vs mutable reference" concept as far as I know, or at least, there is no mapping in pybind11 for such a thing. So I guess in some sense, having both spec and specmod on the Python side is redundant. I suppose it's just for symmetry with the C++ side, but you can do it all with spec. > On Apr 14, 2021, at 12:26 AM, Alister Chowdhury <krax.po...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm not totally sure if this is a bug or intentional, but when the python > bindings were rewritten `spec()` and `nativespec()` seem to have stopped > returning copies and began returning references. > > I remember in the before time, that you would have to use `specmod()` in the > past if you wanted to directly modify a `ImageBuf` in the before time and as > `spec()` now returns a reference `specmod()` seems somewhat redundant. > > Many thanks, > Alister -- Larry Gritz l...@larrygritz.com
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