* Make string conversion stricter
The string conversion logic added in PR #624 for all std::basic_strings
was derived from the old std::wstring logic, but that was underused and
turns out to have had a bug in accepting almost anything convertible to
unicode, while the previous std::string logic was much stricter. This
restores the previous std::string logic by only allowing actual unicode
or string types.
Fixes#685.
* Added missing 'requires numpy' decorator
(I forgot that the change to a global decorator here is in the
not-yet-merged Eigen PR)
* `array_t(const object &)` now throws on error
* `array_t::ensure()` is intended for casters —- old constructor is
deprecated
* `array` and `array_t` get default constructors (empty array)
* `array` gets a converting constructor
* `py::isinstance<array_T<T>>()` checks the type (but not flags)
There is only one special thing which must remain: `array_t` gets
its own `type_caster` specialization which uses `ensure` instead
of a simple check.
The current integer caster was unnecessarily strict and rejected
various kinds of NumPy integer types when calling C++ functions
expecting normal integers. This relaxes the current behavior.
This patch adds an extra base handle parameter to most ``py::array`` and
``py::array_t<>`` constructors. If specified along with a pointer to
data, the base object will be registered within NumPy, which increases
the base's reference count. This feature is useful to create shallow
copies of C++ or Python arrays while ensuring that the owners of the
underlying can't be garbage collected while referenced by NumPy.
The commit also adds a simple test function involving a ``wrap()``
function that creates shallow copies of various N-D arrays.
