Add functions to name features

[lisitsyn]

Currently all the features we use are just indexes like 0 to N but sometimes you don't really want to maintain the index <-> name relation so probably it makes sense to add some functions to name features.

@karlnapf @lambday tell me what you think.

[karlnapf]

Cant this be solved with a seperate table where people store their names?

I like it but is it really something we should do from within shogun? Just increases complexity....

[lisitsyn]

There is a few pros if we consider feature to be an entity, we could

1) name it 2) disable/enable it 3) use it as label interchangeably

On Friday, February 20, 2015, Heiko Strathmann notifications@github.com wrote:

Cant this be solved with a seperate table where people store their names?

I like it but is it really something we should do from within shogun? Just increases complexity....

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/shogun-toolbox/shogun/issues/2727#issuecomment-75287632 .

[karlnapf]

In my eyes this would be an attempt to reinvent wheels. There are data storage libs which can do this. Also I dont really see what we get other than convenience?

I mean yeah, might be nice, but given the horrible horrible state the feature classes are in, I would rather do some proper design clean ups before adding to this shaky fundament. Just my two cents

[lisitsyn]

Say you want to load a csv file and then select one attribute to predict. Currently we have CSV stuff but we can't handle such simple cases. That's why we should either don't work with any io at all or support it better.

[karlnapf]

Yeah I agree. Good thing to have.

To restate my main point: We don't want to do this by hand but use a lib to do this for us. And if we do, we should clean up first. The Features code is horrible enough already. Dont you think?

[Ajeet-Yadav]

@karlnapf yup! right