[ARROW-15131] [Python] Coerce value_set argument to array in "is_in" kernel

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: Python
• Labels: compute
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/30639
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Joris Van den Bossche
• Created: 16/Dec/21 10:38
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:44

Description

Small example I ran into:

>>> arr = pa.array(['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
>>> pc.is_in(arr, ['a', 'c'])
...
TypeError: "['a', 'c']" is not a valid value set

That's not a super friendly error message (it was not directly clear what is not "valid" about this). Passing pa.array(['a', 'c']) explicitly works, but I expected that the kernel would try this automatically (as we also convert the first array argument to an array).