Data type objects for SimpleArray

[tigercosmos]

Currently, SimpleArray only supports dtype as numbers. It is possible for SimpleArray to support dtype as an object. Reference: https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/arrays.dtypes.html

[yungyuc]

We should start with accepting dtype as a string before SimpleArray is enhanced to support struct array. String suffices for fundamental types.

[yungyuc]

String and object arrays in numpy are slow. We do not need to support them in SimpleArray and modmesh because we will not use the string and object arrays in C++.

For the string specifiers for dtype, I propose to use the convention of int8, uint64, float32, etc. It is like the fixed-width type names in C++ and is explicit about bit width for real numbers.

[tigercosmos]

I think we have already supported it except for the bool type. For example, the statement is valid as modmesh.SimpleArray((3, 2), value=-2, dtype='int64'). Is this what you meant?

[yungyuc]

Yeah. That's what I meant.

[tigercosmos]

Then we don't need to do anything. Also, the original topic is rejected. Close this discussion.

[yungyuc]

The topic can remain open for discussion if you want