astropy/astropy — pull request #1403 by taldcroft (2013-09-04 02:46:31+00:00)
Title: Table Add Column yields "*** ValueError: Setting void-array with object members using buffer."

Sometime in the last week or two (I think; this is based on recent travis failures encountered in astroquery), a change in astropy.table has resulted in the above error. The code below will reproduce the error:

```
>>> data = '::script::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::\n\nquery bibcode wildcard 2006ApJ*\n\n::console:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::\n\nC.D.S. - SIMBAD4 rel 1.207 - 2013.06.28CEST19:58:02\ntotal execution time: 2.191 secs\nsimbatch done\n\n::data::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::\n\n2006ApJ...636....1K -- ?\nAstrophys. J., 636, 1-7 (2006)\nKOBAYASHI M.A.R., KAMAYA H. and YONEHARA A.\nLy{alpha} line spectra of the first galaxies: dependence on observed direction to the underlying cold dark matter filament.\nFiles: (abstract) (no object)\n2006ApJ...636....8H -- ?\nAstrophys. J., 636, 8-20 (2006)\nHARKO T. and CHENG K.S.\nGalactic metric, dark radiation, dark pressure, and gravitational lensing in brane world models.\nFiles: (abstract)\n'
>>> splitter='2006ApJ'
>>> ref_list = [splitter + ref for ref in data.split(splitter)][2:]
>>> from astropy.table import Table
>>> table = Table(names=['References'], dtypes=['object'])
>>> for ref in ref_list:
>>> table.add_row([ref.decode('utf-8')])

ERROR: ValueError: Setting void-array with object members using buffer. [astropy.table.table]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 2, in
table.add_row([ref.decode('utf-8')])
File "/Users/adam/repos/astropy/astropy/table/table.py", line 2102, in add_row
self._data[-1] = test_data[-1]
ValueError: Setting void-array with object members using buffer.

```

(note: in order to see this error, I had to use `git clean -fxd` prior to `python setup.py develop`, which I think means that this is associated with a compiled module)