[cctbxbb] Flex array slice assignment work-alike

[Luc Bourhis]

Hi,

On 11 Apr 2013, at 09:49, James Stroud wrote:

> It seems that flex arrays do not support slice assignment:

it would not be too difficult to code 1-dimensional slice assignment  but ...

On 11 Apr 2013, at 10:24, Graeme.Winter at Diamond.ac.uk wrote:

> [...] 
>             array[k,:,:] = image.as_numpy_array()[y0:y1, x0:x1]

that's way more difficult!

This is the first time somebody voices such requests loud enough afaik. The Boost Python mapping of slicing is a bit of a mess: e.g. what Richard had to do to support multidimensional slicing for __getitem__ is quite scary. The argument cuts both ways of course, as adding those new features could be an opportunity to attempt to clean the code.

I will have a go in the coming weeks and I'll combine that with your request, James, for better conversions to and from numpy arrays. Unless Richard beats me to it!

Best wishes,

Luc