This code works for me on numpy 1.6.2 but on 1.7.1 I get an exception, because in the new version numpy.core._internal._index_fields calls ary.view() and this doesn't work on object arrays. import ...

I know way too little about numpy internals to judge if this patch is consistent with the numpy conventions etc.; but keeping this bug in recarrays somehow make the whole recarray class superfluous if ...