title: What does the Ellipsis object do?
body: <p>While idly surfing the namespace I noticed an odd looking object called <code>Ellipsis</code>, it does not seem to be or do anything special, but it's a globally available builtin. </p>
  
  <p>After a search I found that it is used in some obscure variant of the slicing syntax by Numpy and Scipy... but almost nothing else. </p>
  
  <p>Was this object added to the language specifically to support Numpy + Scipy? Does Ellipsis have any generic meaning or use at all?</p>
  
  <pre><code>D:\workspace\numpy&gt;python
  Python 2.4.4 (#71, Oct 18 2006, 08:34:43) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  &gt;&gt;&gt; Ellipsis
  Ellipsis
  </code></pre>