On Thu, 2021-05-20 at 19:00 +0100, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Thu, 20 May 2021 at 18:13, Luciano Ramalho <luci...@ramalho.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'd like to learn about use cases where `...` (a.k.a. `Ellipsis`)
> > is
> > not a good sentinel. It's a pickable singleton testable with `is`,
> > readily available, and extremely unlikely to appear in a data
> > stream.
> > Its repr is "Ellipsis".
>
> Personally, I'm quite tempted by the idea of using ellipsis. It just
> sort of feels reasonable (and in the context `def f(x,
> optional_arg=...)` it even looks pretty natural).
>
> But it nevertheless feels like a bit of an abuse - the original point
> of ellipsis was for indexing, and in particular complex slices like
> a[1:20:2, ..., 3:5]. That usage is common in numpy, as I understand
> it, even if it's relatively rare in everyday Python. So while I like
> the idea in principle, I'm mildly worried that it's not "the right
> thing to do".
>
> I can't put my ambivalence about the idea any more precisely than
> this, unfortunately.
In NumPy we use a "missing argument" sentinel currently. Mainly for
things roughly like:
def mean(arr, *, axis=np._NoValue):
if not hasattr(arr, "mean"):
# Not a duck that defines `mean`, coerce to ndarray:
arr = np.asarray(arr)
if axis is np._NoValue:
return arr.mean()
return arr.mean(axis=axis)
This allows us to add new keyword arguments without breaking backward
compatibility. I do not remember if we had particularly important
reasons for not wanting to drop the default `None`, or it was just
erring on the safe side.
In any case, I tend to agree that `Ellipsis` should be considered
"user-facing" value. And in the above code, we do not expect anyone to
ever call `np.mean(something, axis=np._NoValue)` – its not even
accessible – but if the value was `...` then I would expect users to be
encouraged to write `np.mean(arr, axis=...)` in normal code.
More importantly, I can think of a reasonable "meaning" for `axis=...`!
In NumPy `axis=None` (default) returns a scalar, `axis=...` could
return a 0-D array.
This would borrow meanings that `Ellipsis` carries in indexing. [1]
Cheers,
Sebastian
[1] In such a mental model, it would mean the same as
`axis=range(arr.ndim)`. To be clear, NumPy doesn't do this, its just a
plausible meaning if it has to continue to juggle scalars and 0-D
arrays and wants to be "clearer" about it.
>
> Paul
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