astropy/astropy — pull request #1250 by taldcroft (2013-07-12 01:44:58+00:00)
Title: Make Column/MaskedColumn copy method compatible with numpy copy

This numpy PR https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/3265 revealed a latent bug in `Column` and `MaskedColumn` where the `copy` method was being overloaded in a way that is incompatible with the native `ndarray.copy` and `MaskedArray.copy` methods. Both of those support a single initial argument `order`. This patch puts an `order` arg up front and then uses it in the native `copy` calls.

I suspect there are no user applications using the `copy` method here with the `data` arg as a positional argument. Thus I think it's OK to make this API change with no deprecation release or otherwise more gentle transition. We definitely want this in place ASAP so when numpy 1.8 comes out there aren't problems.