8.6. array — Efficient arrays of numeric values

该模块定义了一个对象类型,可以紧凑地表示一个基本值的数组:字符,整数,浮点数。数组是序列类型,和列表很相似,数组存储类型为约束的对象类型(类型约束:就是要求某个变量只能使用(接受,存储)某种指定的数据类型)。The type is specified at object creation time by using a type code, which is a single character. 定义了以下类型代码:

Type codeC TypePython Type最小(字节)
'c'charcharacter1
'b'signed charint1
'B'unsigned charint1
'u'Py_UNICODEUnicode character2 (see note)
'h'signed shortint2
'H'unsigned shortint2
'i'signed intint2
'I'unsigned intlong2
'l'signed longint4
'L'unsigned longlong4
'f'floatfloat4
'd'doublefloat8

Note

The 'u' typecode corresponds to Python’s unicode character. 狭窄的 Unicode 版本,这是 2 字节上宽的生成,,这是 4 个字节。

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 itemsize attribute. The values stored for 'L' and 'I' items will be represented as Python long integers when retrieved, because Python’s plain integer type cannot represent the full range of C’s unsigned (long) integers.

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 list, string, or iterable over elements of the appropriate type.

Changed in version 2.4: Formerly, only lists or strings were accepted.

If given a list or string, the initializer is passed to the new array’s fromlist(), fromstring(), or fromunicode() method (see below) to add initial items to the array. Otherwise, the iterable initializer is passed to the extend() method.

array.ArrayType

Obsolete alias for 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 buffer objects are supported.

The following data items and methods are also supported:

array.typecode

The typecode character used to create the array.

array.itemsize

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

array.append(x)

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

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 Buffers and Memoryview Objects.

array.byteswap()

“Byteswap” all items of the array. This is only supported for values which are 1, 2, 4, or 8 bytes in size; for other types of values, RuntimeError is raised. It is useful when reading data from a file written on a machine with a different byte order.

array.count(x)

返回数组中x的出现次数。

array.extend(iterable)

将项目从可迭代追加到数组的末尾。 If iterable is another array, it must have exactly the same type code; if not, TypeError will be raised. If iterable is not an array, it must be iterable and its elements must be the right type to be appended to the array.

Changed in version 2.4: Formerly, the argument could only be another array.

array.fromfile(f, n)

Read n items (as machine values) from the file object f and append them to the end of the array. If less than n items are available, EOFError is raised, but the items that were available are still inserted into the array. f must be a real built-in file object; something else with a read() method won’t do.

array.fromlist(list)

Append items from the list. This is equivalent to for x in list: a.append(x) except that if there is a type error, the array is unchanged.

array.fromstring(s)

Appends items from the string, interpreting the string as an array of machine values (as if it had been read from a file using the fromfile() method).

array.fromunicode(s)

Extends this array with data from the given unicode string. The array must be a type 'u' array; otherwise a ValueError is raised. Use array.fromstring(unicodestring.encode(enc)) to append Unicode data to an array of some other type.

array.index(x)

Return the smallest i such that i is the index of the first occurrence of x in the array.

array.insert(i, x)

Insert a new item with value x in the array before position i. Negative values are treated as being relative to the end of the array.

array.pop([i])

Removes the item with the index i from the array and returns it. The optional argument defaults to -1, so that by default the last item is removed and returned.

array.read(f, n)

Deprecated since version 1.5.1: Use the fromfile() method.

Read n items (as machine values) from the file object f and append them to the end of the array. If less than n items are available, EOFError is raised, but the items that were available are still inserted into the array. f must be a real built-in file object; something else with a read() method won’t do.

array.remove(x)

Remove the first occurrence of x from the array.

array.reverse()

Reverse the order of the items in the array.

array.tofile(f)

Write all items (as machine values) to the file object f.

array.tolist()

Convert the array to an ordinary list with the same items.

array.tostring()

Convert the array to an array of machine values and return the string representation (the same sequence of bytes that would be written to a file by the tofile() method.)

array.tounicode()

Convert the array to a unicode string. The array must be a type 'u' array; otherwise a ValueError is raised. Use array.tostring().decode(enc) to obtain a unicode string from an array of some other type.

array.write(f)

Deprecated since version 1.5.1: Use the tofile() method.

Write all items (as machine values) to the file object f.

When an array object is printed or converted to a string, it is represented as array(typecode, initializer). The initializer is omitted if the array is empty, otherwise it is a string if the typecode is 'c', otherwise it is a list of numbers. The string is guaranteed to be able to be converted back to an array with the same type and value using eval(), so long as the array() function has been imported using from array import array. Examples:

array('l')
array('c', 'hello world')
array('u', u'hello \u2641')
array('l', [1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
array('d', [1.0, 2.0, 3.14])

See also

Module struct
Packing and unpacking of heterogeneous binary data.
Module xdrlib
Packing and unpacking of External Data Representation (XDR) data as used in some remote procedure call systems.
The Numerical Python Documentation
The Numeric Python extension (NumPy) defines another array type; see http://www.numpy.org/ for further information about Numerical Python.

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