Hi!

During yesterday's NumPy Triage Call we had a discussion about copy keyword for the asarray function, namely None/False/True choice for possible values.

The conclusion was that asarray(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 for copy 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.