ContinuumIO/blaze — pull request #336 by mrocklin (2014-06-16 17:33:45+00:00)
Title: Add `into` operation to api

This restarts #240 , creating an abstract `into` operation to shove data in one container into another. This is analogous to the various `as_foo` and `fromtop

```Python
>>> into([], (1, 2, 3)) # cast lists, tuples, sets
[1, 2, 3]

>>> into(nd.array(), [1, 2, 3])
nd.array([1, 2, 3], type="strided * int32")

>>> into([], nd.array([1, 2, 3]))
[1, 2, 3]

>>> csv = CSV('user_edges.txt',
columns=['transaction', 'sender', 'recipient', 'timestamp', 'value'],
hints={'timestamp': 'datetime'})

>>> from pandas import DataFrame
>>> into(DataFrame, csv)
transaction sender recipient timestamp value
0 1 2 2 2013-04-10 14:22:50 24.375000
1 1 2 782477 2013-04-10 14:22:50 0.770900
2 2 620423 4571210 2011-12-27 11:43:12 614.174951
3 2 620423 3 2011-12-27 11:43:12 128.040520
4 3 3 782479 2013-04-10 14:22:50 47.140520
5 3 3 4 2013-04-10 14:22:50 150.000000
6 4 39337 39337 2012-06-17 12:02:02 0.310818
7 4 39337 3 2012-06-17 12:02:02 69.100000
...
```