Hi!

During yesterday's NumPy Triage Call we had a discussion aboutcopy keyword for theasarray function, namelyNone/False/True choice for possible values.

The conclusion was thatasarray(x, copy=None) doesn't convey the message of "make a copy only if needed", and could be replaced with something more expressive.

We came up with other possibilities, like string values:

• Always copy:asarray(x, copy="always")
• Copy if needed:asarray(x, copy="ifneeded")
• Never copy:asarray(x, copy="never")

My question is: Would it make sense to move from None/bool values forcopy keyword to string values in the Array API?

Each library can then use and interpret None/bool as they wish, and only adhere to Array API with new string values that can be passed for library agnostic code.