* ma.masked_equal : force the `fill_value` of the output to `value` (ticket #1253)

* lib._iotools:
  - NameValidator : add the `nbfields` optional argument to validate
  - add easy_dtype

* lib.io.genfromtxt : 
  - add the `autostrip` optional argument (ticket #1238)
  - use `invalid_raise=True` as default
  - use the easy_dtype mechanism (ticket #1252)

2 files changed, 9 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/numpy/ma/core.py b/numpy/ma/core.py
index d32385493..cee884e9d 100644
--- a/numpy/ma/core.py
+++ b/numpy/ma/core.py
@@ -1963,7 +1963,9 @@ def masked_equal(x, value, copy=True):
     # c = umath.equal(d, value)
     # m = mask_or(c, getmask(x))
     # return array(d, mask=m, copy=copy)
-    return masked_where(equal(x, value), x, copy=copy)
+    output = masked_where(equal(x, value), x, copy=copy)
+    output.fill_value = value
+    return output
 
 
 def masked_inside(x, v1, v2, copy=True):
diff --git a/numpy/ma/tests/test_core.py b/numpy/ma/tests/test_core.py
index 61f315753..e3447b546 100644
--- a/numpy/ma/tests/test_core.py
+++ b/numpy/ma/tests/test_core.py
@@ -2591,6 +2591,12 @@ class TestMaskedArrayFunctions(TestCase):
         assert_equal(mx, x)
         assert_equal(mx._mask, [1,1,0])
 
+    def test_masked_equal_fill_value(self):
+        x = [1, 2, 3]
+        mx = masked_equal(x, 3)
+        assert_equal(mx._mask, [0, 0, 1])
+        assert_equal(mx.fill_value, 3)
+
     def test_masked_where_condition(self):
         "Tests masking functions."
         x = array([1.,2.,3.,4.,5.])