NaNs in Float64Index are converted to silly integers using index.astype('int')

[ch41rmn]

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

>>> df = pd.DataFrame({'a': [1, 2], 'b': [3, 4]})
>>> df.index = [None, 1]
>>> df
      a  b
NaN   1  3
 1.0  2  4
>>> df.index = df.index.astype('int')
>>> df
                      a  b
-9223372036854775808  1  3
 1                    2  4

output of pd.show_versions()

>>> pd.show_versions()

INSTALLED VERSIONS
------------------
commit: None
python: 2.7.11.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Linux
OS-release: 4.1.13-100.fc21.x86_64
machine: x86_64
processor: x86_64
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: en_AU.utf8

pandas: 0.18.1
nose: None
pip: 8.1.1
setuptools: 20.2.2
Cython: None
numpy: 1.11.0
scipy: 0.17.0
statsmodels: None
xarray: 0.7.2
IPython: 4.2.0
sphinx: 1.3.5
patsy: None
dateutil: 2.4.2
pytz: 2015.7
blosc: None
bottleneck: 1.0.0
tables: 3.2.2
numexpr: 2.5.2
matplotlib: 1.5.1
openpyxl: None
xlrd: None
xlwt: None
xlsxwriter: None
lxml: None
bs4: None
html5lib: None
httplib2: None
apiclient: None
sqlalchemy: None
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
jinja2: 2.8
boto: None
pandas_datareader: None

[jorisvandenbossche]

This is numpy behaviour:

In [22]: np.array([np.nan, 1.]).astype(int)
Out[22]: array([-2147483648,           1])

But, we should probably check for the occurence of NaNs, just as we do for Series:

In [29]: df.iloc[0,0] = np.nan

In [30]: df.a
Out[30]:
NaN   NaN
 1      2
Name: a, dtype: float64

In [31]: df.a.astype(int)
...

C:\Anaconda\lib\site-packages\pandas\core\common.pyc in _astype_nansafe(arr, dty
pe, copy)
   2726
   2727         if np.isnan(arr).any():
-> 2728             raise ValueError('Cannot convert NA to integer')
   2729     elif arr.dtype == np.object_ and np.issubdtype(dtype.type, np.intege
r):
   2730         # work around NumPy brokenness, #1987

ValueError: Cannot convert NA to integer

[pijucha]

I wanted to fix this bug but noticed a similar behaviour of other objects: DatetimeIndex, TimedeltaIndex, Categorical, CategoricalIndex. Namely (all four of them behave identically):

A = pd.DatetimeIndex([1e10,2e10,None])
A
Out[76]: DatetimeIndex(['1970-01-01 00:00:10', '1970-01-01 00:00:20', 'NaT'], dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq=None)
A.astype(int)
Out[77]: array([         10000000000,          20000000000, -9223372036854775808])

However, unlike with Float64Index, this is invertible:

pd.DatetimeIndex(A.astype(int))
Out[78]: DatetimeIndex(['1970-01-01 00:00:10', '1970-01-01 00:00:20', 'NaT'], dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq=None)

My question: is this behaviour also a bug and should be fixed the same way (raising a ValueError)? And if so, should all the fixes be placed into one commit/pull request?

By the way, there might be other objects with the same issue, which call numpy.ndarray.astype(). And numpy is also a bit inconsistent here:

np.array([1,np.nan]).astype(int)
Out[84]: array([                   1, -9223372036854775808])
np.array([1,np.nan], dtype = int)
Traceback...
ValueError: cannot convert float NaN to integer

[jreback]

@ch41rmn these are all as expected. converting to int converts to the underlying integer based representation.

The only issue is that Float64Index.astype(int) should raise (as its effectively non-convertible).

[jorisvandenbossche]

@jreback I actually think we should raise in the datetimeindex case as well (ideally). A NaT cannot be converted to int (just as float nan cannot be converted). There is the asi8 attribute if you want this.
But, of course, that is not really back compat. Internally I think we consequently use asi8? But not sure about external use of course

[jorisvandenbossche]

Raising for CategoricalIndex seems less of a problem (not a common thing to do)

[jreback]

This is excactly what should be returned (and is useful). yes its equivalen to internal .asi8, but I dont' see a good reason to NOT do this.

In [20]: pd.DatetimeIndex([1e10,2e10,None]).astype(int)
Out[20]: array([         10000000000,          20000000000, -9223372036854775808])