BUG: Fix recarray getattr and getindex return types

This commit makes changes to `__getitem__` and `__getattr__` of recarrays:

 1. recarrays no longer convert string ndarrays to chararrays, and
    instead simply return ndarrays of string type.
 2. attribute access and index access of fields now behaves identically
 3. dtype.type is now inherited when fields of structured type are accessed

Demonstration:

    >>> rec = np.rec.array([('abc ', (1,1), 1), ('abc', (2,3), 1)],
    ...       dtype=[('foo', 'S4'), ('bar', [('A', int), ('B', int)]), ('baz', int)])

Old Behavior:

    >>> type(rec.foo), type(rec['foo'])
    (numpy.core.defchararray.chararray, numpy.recarray)
    >>> type(rec.bar), type(rec['bar']), rec.bar.dtype.type
    (numpy.recarray, numpy.recarray, numpy.void)
    >>> type(rec.baz), type(rec['baz'])
    (numpy.ndarray, numpy.ndarray)

New behavior:

    >>> type(rec.foo), type(rec['foo'])
    (numpy.ndarray, numpy.ndarray)
    >>> type(rec.bar), type(rec['bar']), rec.bar.dtype.type
    (numpy.recarray, numpy.recarray, numpy.record)
    >>> type(rec.baz), type(rec['baz'])
    (numpy.ndarray, numpy.ndarray)

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/numpy/doc/structured_arrays.py b/numpy/doc/structured_arrays.py
index f2329827e..d8b4fc719 100644
--- a/numpy/doc/structured_arrays.py
+++ b/numpy/doc/structured_arrays.py
@@ -268,6 +268,10 @@ array if the field has a structured type but as a plain ndarray otherwise. ::
  >>> type(recordarr.bar)
  <class 'numpy.core.records.recarray'>
 
+Note that if a field has the same name as an ndarray attribute, the ndarray
+attribute takes precedence. Such fields will be inaccessible by attribute but
+may still be accessed by index.
+
 Partial Attribute Access
 ------------------------