ndarray of text does not display correctly in variable explorer

[PhilipYip1988]

Issue Report Checklist

• Searched the issues page for similar reports
• Read the relevant sections of the Spyder Troubleshooting Guide and followed its advice
• Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• Could not reproduce inside jupyter qtconsole (if console-related)
• Tried basic troubleshooting (if a bug/error)
  • Restarted Spyder
  • Reset preferences with spyder --reset
  • Reinstalled the latest version of Anaconda
  • Tried the other applicable steps from the Troubleshooting Guide
• Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

Create an ndarray:

import numpy as np
mosaic = np.array([['a', 'b'],
                   ['c', 'd']])

What steps reproduce the problem?

1. Create ndarray of text values
2. Open in variable explorer
3. strings are empty

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

There is an empty array, the text should display in it.

Paste Traceback/Error Below (if applicable)

PASTE TRACEBACK HERE

Versions

• Spyder version: 6.0.0 (standalone)
• Python version: 3.11.9 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.15.8
• PyQt5 version: 5.15.9
• Operating System: Windows-10-10.0.26100-SP0

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
aiohttp >=3.9.3                  :  3.10.5 (OK)
asyncssh >=2.14.0,<3.0.0         :  2.17.0 (OK)
atomicwrites >=1.2.0             :  1.4.1 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                  :  5.2.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0              :  3.0.0 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0             :  2.6.0 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111      :  20230430 (OK)
github >=2.3.0                   :  2.4.0 (OK)
importlib_metadata >=4.6.0       :  8.4.0 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2             :  3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=8.13.0,<9.0.0,!=8.17.1 :  8.27.0 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2,<0.20.0            :  0.19.1 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7                  :  1.1.0 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0               :  4.23.0 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0                 :  25.3.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                  :  7.16.4 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0                 :  1.8.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0,<0.9.0             :  0.8.4 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                  :  4.9.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4                :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                     :  6.0.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                   :  2.18.0 (OK)
pylint >=3.1,<4                  :  3.2.7 (OK)
pylint_venv >=3.0.2              :  3.0.3 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0              :  0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.12.0,<1.13.0           :  1.12.0 (OK)
pylsp_black >=2.0.0,<3.0.0       :  2.0.0 (OK)
pyuca >=1.2                      :  1.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.2.0,<3.3.0        :  3.2.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2                :  0.2.3 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.3.1,<1.4.0         :  1.3.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.6.0,<5.7.0         :  5.6.0 (OK)
qtpy >=2.4.0                     :  2.4.1 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7                    :  1.3.0 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0              :  73.0.1 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6                   :  8.0.2 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=3.0.0,<3.1.0    :  3.0.0 (OK)
superqt >=0.6.2,<1.0.0           :  0.6.7 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0             :  4.6.2 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1              :  0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3                :  5.0.1 (OK)
yarl >=1.9.4                     :  1.9.7 (OK)
zmq >=24.0.0                     :  26.2.0 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                    :  3.0.11 (OK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0               :  3.9.2 (OK)
numpy >=1.7                      :  2.1.0 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1                   :  2.2.2 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                   :  1.14.1 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3                    :  1.13.2 (OK)

[ccordoba12]

Hey @PhilipYip1988, thanks for reporting. I was able to reproduce this problem and we'll try to fix it in a future version.

[jitseniesen]

I tried to bisect and I think this issue may be caused by PR #20473 by myself, so I will try to fix it.

[jitseniesen]

I think I figured out what is going on: Spyder uses format(..., 's') to convert array elements to strings. Here, this returns something that looks like an str but it is actually a different type:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> mosaic = np.array([['a', 'b'],
...                    ['c', 'd']])
>>> format(mosaic[0,0], 's')
'a'
>>> isinstance(format(mosaic[0,0], 's'), str)
True
>>> type(format(mosaic[0,0], 's'))
<class 'numpy.str_'>

That seems to confuse the Qt widget that displays the array. PR should be arriving soon.

[PhilipYip1988]

Just updated to 6.0.1 and it looks much better.

However it still says ndarray object of numpy module in the variable explorer (red) instead of:

np.array([[a, b],
          [c, d]])

Also I can double click into a text field for example the a and edit the text to abcde (shown in blue). When I click out of the field, it reverts to the original value. This means Save and Close (shown in green) cannot be used:

[jitseniesen]

However it still says ndarray object of numpy module in the variable explorer (red)

Spyder 5 did the same, but I agree that we can do better. This is a separate issue so I opened a new one in order to stay organized: #22570.

Also I can double click into a text field for example the a and edit the text to abcde (shown in blue). When I click out of the field, it reverts to the original value.

This reflects how numpy works:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> arr = np.array([['a','b'],['c','d']])
>>> arr[0,0] = 'abcde'
>>> arr
array([['a', 'b'],
       ['c', 'd']], dtype='<U1')

The reason is that arr is an array of strings of length 1 and longer strings are (apparently) truncated. This is pretty confusing and it took me a while to figure it out. However, I don't know what we should do about it.