[ARROW-9465] [Python] Improve ergonomics of compute functions

• Type: Wish
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.0.0
• Component/s: Python
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/25538
• Assignee: Antoine Pitrou
• Reporter: Antoine Pitrou
• Created: 14/Jul/20 13:19
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:07
• Resolved: 14/Sep/20 17:22

Description

Introspection of exported compute functions currently yield suboptimal output:

>>> from pyarrow import compute as pc                                                                                                                                 
>>> pc.list_flatten                                                                                                                                                   
<function pyarrow.compute._simple_unary_function.<locals>.func(arg)>
>>> ?pc.list_flatten                                                                                                                                                  
Signature: pc.list_flatten(arg)
Docstring: <no docstring>
File:      ~/arrow/dev/python/pyarrow/compute.py
Type:      function
>>> help(pc.list_flatten)                                                                                                                                             
Help on function func in module pyarrow.compute:

func(arg)

The function should ideally have:

• the right global name
• an appropriate signature
• a docstring

Issue Links

• fixes: ARROW-7871 [Python] Expose more compute kernels
• is related to: ARROW-9164 [C++] Provide APIs for adding "docstrings" to arrow::compute::Function classes that can be accessed by bindings
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #8163