Python defines only one type of a particular data class (there is only one integer type, one floating-point type, etc.). This can be convenient in applications that donât need to be concerned with all the ways data can be represented in a computer. For scientific computing, however, more control is often needed.
In NumPy, there are 24 new fundamental Python types to describe different types of scalars. These type descriptors are mostly based on the types available in the C language that CPython is written in, with several additional types compatible with Pythonâs types.
Array scalars have the same attributes and methods as ndarrays
. [1] This allows one to treat items of an array partly on the same footing as arrays, smoothing out rough edges that result when mixing scalar and array operations.
Array scalars live in a hierarchy (see the Figure below) of data types. They can be detected using the hierarchy: For example, isinstance(val, np.generic)
will return True
if val is an array scalar object. Alternatively, what kind of array scalar is present can be determined using other members of the data type hierarchy. Thus, for example isinstance(val, np.complexfloating)
will return True
if val is a complex valued type, while isinstance(val, np.flexible)
will return true if val is one of the flexible itemsize array types (string
, unicode
, void
).
Figure: Hierarchy of type objects representing the array data types. Not shown are the two integer types intp
and uintp
which just point to the integer type that holds a pointer for the platform. All the number types can be obtained using bit-width names as well.
The built-in scalar types are shown below. Along with their (mostly) C-derived names, the integer, float, and complex data-types are also available using a bit-width convention so that an array of the right size can always be ensured (e.g. int8
, float64
, complex128
). Two aliases (intp
and uintp
) pointing to the integer type that is sufficiently large to hold a C pointer are also provided. The C-like names are associated with character codes, which are shown in the table. Use of the character codes, however, is discouraged.
Some of the scalar types are essentially equivalent to fundamental Python types and therefore inherit from them as well as from the generic array scalar type:
Array scalar type Related Python typeint_
IntType
(Python 2 only) float_
FloatType
complex_
ComplexType
bytes_
BytesType
unicode_
UnicodeType
The bool_
data type is very similar to the Python BooleanType
but does not inherit from it because Pythonâs BooleanType
does not allow itself to be inherited from, and on the C-level the size of the actual bool data is not the same as a Python Boolean scalar.
Warning
The bool_
type is not a subclass of the int_
type (the bool_
is not even a number type). This is different than Pythonâs default implementation of bool
as a sub-class of int.
Warning
The int_
type does not inherit from the int
built-in under Python 3, because type int
is no longer a fixed-width integer type.
Tip
The default data type in NumPy is float_
.
In the tables below, platform?
means that the type may not be available on all platforms. Compatibility with different C or Python types is indicated: two types are compatible if their data is of the same size and interpreted in the same way.
Booleans:
Type Remarks Character codebool_
compatible: Python bool '?'
bool8
8 bits
Integers:
byte
compatible: C char 'b'
short
compatible: C short 'h'
intc
compatible: C int 'i'
int_
compatible: Python int 'l'
longlong
compatible: C long long 'q'
intp
large enough to fit a pointer 'p'
int8
8 bits int16
16 bits int32
32 bits int64
64 bits
Unsigned integers:
ubyte
compatible: C unsigned char 'B'
ushort
compatible: C unsigned short 'H'
uintc
compatible: C unsigned int 'I'
uint
compatible: Python int 'L'
ulonglong
compatible: C long long 'Q'
uintp
large enough to fit a pointer 'P'
uint8
8 bits uint16
16 bits uint32
32 bits uint64
64 bits
Floating-point numbers:
half
'e'
single
compatible: C float 'f'
double
compatible: C double float_
compatible: Python float 'd'
longfloat
compatible: C long float 'g'
float16
16 bits float32
32 bits float64
64 bits float96
96 bits, platform? float128
128 bits, platform?
Complex floating-point numbers:
csingle
'F'
complex_
compatible: Python complex 'D'
clongfloat
'G'
complex64
two 32-bit floats complex128
two 64-bit floats complex192
two 96-bit floats, platform? complex256
two 128-bit floats, platform?
Any Python object:
object_
any Python object 'O'
Note
The data actually stored in object arrays (i.e., arrays having dtype object_
) are references to Python objects, not the objects themselves. Hence, object arrays behave more like usual Python lists
, in the sense that their contents need not be of the same Python type.
The object type is also special because an array containing object_
items does not return an object_
object on item access, but instead returns the actual object that the array item refers to.
The following data types are flexible: they have no predefined size and the data they describe can be of different length in different arrays. (In the character codes #
is an integer denoting how many elements the data type consists of.)
bytes_
compatible: Python bytes 'S#'
unicode_
compatible: Python unicode/str 'U#'
void
'V#'
Warning
See Note on string types.
Numeric Compatibility: If you used old typecode characters in your Numeric code (which was never recommended), you will need to change some of them to the new characters. In particular, the needed changes are c -> S1
, b -> B
, 1 -> b
, s -> h
, w -> H
, and u -> I
. These changes make the type character convention more consistent with other Python modules such as the struct
module.
The array scalar objects have an array priority
of NPY_SCALAR_PRIORITY
(-1,000,000.0). They also do not (yet) have a ctypes
attribute. Otherwise, they share the same attributes as arrays:
Array scalars can be indexed like 0-dimensional arrays: if x is an array scalar,
x[()]
returns a copy of array scalarx[...]
returns a 0-dimensional ndarray
x['field-name']
returns the array scalar in the field field-name. (x can have fields, for example, when it corresponds to a structured data type.)Array scalars have exactly the same methods as arrays. The default behavior of these methods is to internally convert the scalar to an equivalent 0-dimensional array and to call the corresponding array method. In addition, math operations on array scalars are defined so that the same hardware flags are set and used to interpret the results as for ufunc, so that the error state used for ufuncs also carries over to the math on array scalars.
The exceptions to the above rules are given below:
Defining new types¶There are two ways to effectively define a new array scalar type (apart from composing structured types dtypes from the built-in scalar types): One way is to simply subclass the ndarray
and overwrite the methods of interest. This will work to a degree, but internally certain behaviors are fixed by the data type of the array. To fully customize the data type of an array you need to define a new data-type, and register it with NumPy. Such new types can only be defined in C, using the NumPy C-API.
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