From 69e0ed8c58a284ddfd305f2b1ff17cb8d04dd432 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Mark Wiebe <mwiebe@enthought.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:19:16 -0500
Subject: ENH: missingdata: Rewrote boolean indexing to support NA masks

Note I haven't hooked it up to the arr[] operator yet...
---
 doc/neps/missing-data.rst | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+)

(limited to 'doc/neps')

diff --git a/doc/neps/missing-data.rst b/doc/neps/missing-data.rst
index 038ea9370..e83bd2189 100644
--- a/doc/neps/missing-data.rst
+++ b/doc/neps/missing-data.rst
@@ -743,6 +743,38 @@ to be consistent with the result of np.sum([])::
     >>> np.sum([])
     0.0
 
+Boolean Indexing
+================
+
+Indexing using a boolean array containing NAs does not have a consistent
+interpretation according to the NA abstraction. For example::
+
+    >>> a = np.array([1, 2])
+    >>> mask = np.array([np.NA, True], maskna=True)
+    >>> a[mask]
+    What should happen here?
+
+Since the NA represents a valid but unknown value, and it is a boolean,
+it has two possible underlying values::
+
+    >>> a[np.array([True, True])]
+    array([1, 2])
+    >>> a[np.array([False, True])]
+    array([2])
+
+The thing which changes is the length of the output array, nothing which
+itself can be substituted for NA. For this reason, at least initially,
+NumPy will raise an exception for this case.
+
+Another possibility is to add an inconsistency, and follow the approach
+R uses. That is, to produce the following::
+
+    >>> a[mask]
+    array([NA, 2], maskna=True)
+
+If, in user testing, this is found necessary for pragmatic reasons,
+the feature should be added even though it is inconsistent.
+
 PEP 3118
 ========
 
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