Astropy Core Package Utilities (astropy.utils)#
Introduction#
The astropy.utils package contains general-purpose utility functions and
classes. Examples include data structures, tools for downloading and caching
from URLs, and version intercompatibility functions.
This functionality is not astronomy-specific, but is intended primarily for use by Astropy developers. It is all safe for users to use, but the functions and classes are typically more complicated or specific to a particular need of Astropy.
Because of the mostly standalone and grab-bag nature of these utilities, they are generally best understood through their docstrings, and hence this documentation generally does not have detailed sections like the other packages. The exceptions are below:
Note
The astropy.utils.compat subpackage is not included in this
documentation. It contains utility modules for compatibility with
older/newer versions of python and numpy, as well as including some
bugfixes for the stdlib that are important for astropy. It is recommended
that developers at least glance over the source code for this subpackage,
but most of it cannot be reliably included here because of the large
amount of version-specific code it contains. Its content is solely for
internal use of astropy and subject to changes without deprecations.
Do not use it in external packages or code.