Description
Pulling-out a discussion of #24376 (comment), which is buried in a long thread.
I have been working on updating JAX for compatibility with NEP 52, and the inconsistency of treatment of default-width dtypes (uint
, int_
, float_
, complex_
) is something I'm finding confusing.
For consistency, I think either all four should be present in NumPy 2.0, or all four should be removed. The current state, where uint
and int_
are present, but float_
and complex_
are not, is inconsistent and confusing.
I understand the argument about platform-dependence of integer dtypes and non-platform dependence of inexact dtypes. I understand the goal of eliminating unnecessary aliases to types. But I think the consistency of having default-width dtype specifiers available for each dtype kind outweighs the cost of having overlapping names for those default types.