Fix shuffle and chararray printing for empty strings.

2 files changed, 26 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/numpy/core/defchararray.py b/numpy/core/defchararray.py
index 80822328c..39492b421 100644
--- a/numpy/core/defchararray.py
+++ b/numpy/core/defchararray.py
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ class chararray(ndarray):
         if isinstance(val, (string_, unicode_)):
             temp = val.rstrip()
             if len(temp) == 0:
-                val = val[0]
+                val = ''
             else:
                 val = temp
         return val
diff --git a/numpy/random/mtrand/mtrand.pyx b/numpy/random/mtrand/mtrand.pyx
index 9bbb82e3c..9bff5b038 100644
--- a/numpy/random/mtrand/mtrand.pyx
+++ b/numpy/random/mtrand/mtrand.pyx
@@ -1206,13 +1206,33 @@ cdef class RandomState:
         shuffle(x)
         """
         cdef long i, j
+        cdef int copy=0
 
-        # adaptation of random.shuffle()
         i = len(x) - 1
-        while i > 0:
-            j = rk_interval(i, self.internal_state)
-            x[i], x[j] = x[j], x[i]
-            i = i - 1
+        try:
+ 	    j = len(x[0])
+        except:
+            j = 0
+
+        if (j == 0):
+	    # adaptation of random.shuffle()
+            while i > 0:
+                j = rk_interval(i, self.internal_state)
+                x[i], x[j] = x[j], x[i]
+                i = i - 1
+        else:
+            # make copies
+	    copy = hasattr(x[0].copy)
+            if copy:                 
+                while(i > 0):
+                    j = rk_interval(i, self.internal_state)
+                    x[i], x[j] = x[j].copy(), x[i].copy()
+                    i = i - 1
+            else:
+                while(i > 0):
+                    j = rk_interval(i, self.internal_state)
+                    x[i], x[j] = x[j][:], x[i][:]
+                    i = i - 1
                 
     def permutation(self, object x):
         """Given an integer, return a shuffled sequence of integers >= 0 and