array — Efficient arrays of numeric values

This module defines an object type which can compactly represent an array of basic values: characters, integers, floating point numbers. Arrays are sequence types and behave very much like lists, except that the type of objects stored in them is constrained. The type is specified at object creation time by using a type code, which is a single character. The following type codes are defined:

Type code

C Type

Python Type

Minimum size in bytes

Notes

'b'

signed char

int

1

'B'

unsigned char

int

1

'u'

wchar_t

Unicode character

2

(1)

'h'

signed short

int

2

'H'

unsigned short

int

2

'i'

signed int

int

2

'I'

unsigned int

int

2

'l'

signed long

int

4

'L'

unsigned long

int

4

'q'

signed long long

int

8

'Q'

unsigned long long

int

8

'f'

float

float

4

'd'

double

float

8

Notes:

  1. It can be 16 bits or 32 bits depending on the platform.

    Changed in version 3.9: array('u') now uses wchar_t as C type instead of deprecated Py_UNICODE. This change doesn’t affect its behavior because Py_UNICODE is alias of wchar_t since Python 3.3.

    Deprecated since version 3.3, will be removed in version 4.0.

The actual representation of values is determined by the machine architecture (strictly speaking, by the C implementation). The actual size can be accessed through the array.itemsize attribute.

The module defines the following item:

array.typecodes

A string with all available type codes.

The module defines the following type:

class array.array(typecode[, initializer])

A new array whose items are restricted by typecode, and initialized from the optional initializer value, which must be a bytes or bytearray object, a Unicode string, or iterable over elements of the appropriate type.

If given a bytes or bytearray object, the initializer is passed to the new array’s frombytes() method; if given a Unicode string, the initializer is passed to the fromunicode() method; otherwise, the initializer’s iterator is passed to the extend() method to add initial items to the array.

Array objects support the ordinary sequence operations of indexing, slicing, concatenation, and multiplication. When using slice assignment, the assigned value must be an array object with the same type code; in all other cases, TypeError is raised. Array objects also implement the buffer interface, and may be used wherever bytes-like objects are supported.

Raises an auditing event array.__new__ with arguments typecode, initializer.

typecode

The typecode character used to create the array.

itemsize

The length in bytes of one array item in the internal representation.

append(x)

Append a new item with value x to the end of the array.

buffer_info()

Return a tuple (address, length) giving the current memory address and the length in elements of the buffer used to hold array’s contents. The size of the memory buffer in bytes can be computed as array.buffer_info()[1] * array.itemsize. This is occasionally useful when working with low-level (and inherently unsafe) I/O interfaces that require memory addresses, such as certain ioctl() operations. The returned numbers are valid as long as the array exists and no length-changing operations are applied to it.

Note

When using array objects from code written in C or C++ (the only way to effectively make use of this information), it makes more sense to use the buffer interface supported by array objects. This method is maintained for backward compatibility and should be avoided in new code. The buffer interface is documented in Buffer Protocol.

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