Data types

See also

Data type objects

Array types and conversions between types

NumPy supports a much greater variety of numerical types than Python does. This section shows which are available, and how to modify an array’s data-type.

The primitive types supported are tied closely to those in C:

Numpy type	C type	Description
np.bool	bool	Boolean (True or False) stored as a byte
np.byte	signed char	Platform-defined
np.ubyte	unsigned char	Platform-defined
np.short	short	Platform-defined
np.ushort	unsigned short	Platform-defined
np.intc	int	Platform-defined
np.uintc	unsigned int	Platform-defined
np.int_	long	Platform-defined
np.uint	unsigned long	Platform-defined
np.longlong	long long	Platform-defined
np.ulonglong	unsigned long long	Platform-defined
np.half / np.float16		Half precision float: sign bit, 5 bits exponent, 10 bits mantissa
np.single	float	Platform-defined single precision float: typically sign bit, 8 bits exponent, 23 bits mantissa
np.double	double	Platform-defined double precision float: typically sign bit, 11 bits exponent, 52 bits mantissa.
np.longdouble	long double	Platform-defined extended-precision float
np.csingle	float complex	Complex number, represented by two single-precision floats (real and imaginary components)
np.cdouble	double complex	Complex number, represented by two double-precision floats (real and imaginary components).
np.clongdouble	long double complex	Complex number, represented by two extended-precision floats (real and imaginary components).

Since many of these have platform-dependent definitions, a set of fixed-size aliases are provided:

Numpy type	C type	Description
np.int8	int8_t	Byte (-128 to 127)
np.int16	int16_t	Integer (-32768 to 32767)
np.int32	int32_t	Integer (-2147483648 to 2147483647)
np.int64	int64_t	Integer (-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807)
np.uint8	uint8_t	Unsigned integer (0 to 255)
np.uint16	uint16_t	Unsigned integer (0 to 65535)
np.uint32	uint32_t	Unsigned integer (0 to 4294967295)
np.uint64	uint64_t	Unsigned integer (0 to 18446744073709551615)
np.intp	intptr_t	Integer used for indexing, typically the same as ssize_t
np.uintp	uintptr_t	Integer large enough to hold a pointer
np.float32	float
np.float64 / np.float_	double	Note that this matches the precision of the builtin python float.
np.complex64	float complex	Complex number, represented by two 32-bit floats (real and imaginary components)
np.complex128 / np.complex_	double complex	Note that this matches the precision of the builtin python complex.

NumPy numerical types are instances of dtype (data-type) objects, each having unique characteristics. Once you have imported NumPy using

>>> import numpy as np

the dtypes are available as np.bool_, np.float32, etc.

Advanced types, not listed in the table above, are explored in section Structured arrays.

There are 5 basic numerical types representing booleans (bool), integers (int), unsigned integers (uint) floating point (float) and complex. Those with numbers in their name indicate the bitsize of the type (i.e. how many bits are needed to represent a single value in memory). Some types, such as int and intp, have differing bitsizes, dependent on the platforms (e.g. 32-bit vs. 64-bit machines). This should be taken into account when interfacing with low-level code (such as C or Fortran) where the raw memory is addressed.

Data-types can be used as functions to convert python numbers to array scalars (see the array scalar section for an explanation), python sequences of numbers to arrays of that type, or as arguments to the dtype keyword that many numpy functions or methods accept. Some examples:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> x = np.float32(1.0)
>>> x
1.0
>>> y = np.int_([1,2,4])
>>> y
array([1, 2, 4])
>>> z = np.arange(3, dtype=np.uint8)
>>> z
array([0, 1, 2], dtype=uint8)

Array types can also be referred to by character codes, mostly to retain backward compatibility with older packages such as Numeric. Some documentation may still refer to these, for example:

>>> np.array([1, 2, 3], dtype='f')
array([ 1.,  2.,  3.], dtype=float32)

We recommend using dtype objects instead.

To convert the type of an array, use the .astype() method (preferred) or the type itself as a function. For example:

>>> z.astype(float)                 
array([  0.,  1.,  2.])
>>> np.int8(z)
array([0, 1, 2], dtype=int8)

Note that, above, we use the Python float object as a dtype. NumPy knows that int refers to np.int_, bool means np.bool_, that float is np.float_ and complex is np.complex_. The other data-types do not have Python equivalents.

To determine the type of an array, look at the dtype attribute:

>>> z.dtype
dtype('uint8')

dtype objects also contain information about the type, such as its bit-width and its byte-order. The data type can also be used indirectly to query properties of the type, such as whether it is an integer:

>>> d = np.dtype(int)
>>> d
dtype('int32')

>>> np.issubdtype(d, np.integer)
True

>>> np.issubdtype(d, np.floating)
False

Array Scalars

NumPy generally returns elements of arrays as array scalars (a scalar with an associated dtype). Array scalars differ from Python scalars, but for the most part they can be used interchangeably (the primary exception is for versions of Python older than v2.x, where integer array scalars cannot act as indices for lists and tuples). There are some exceptions, such as when code requires very specific attributes of a scalar or when it checks specifically whether a value is a Python scalar. Generally, problems are easily fixed by explicitly converting array scalars to Python scalars, using the corresponding Python type function (e.g., int, float, complex, str, unicode).

The primary advantage of using array scalars is that they preserve the array type (Python may not have a matching scalar type available, e.g. int16). Therefore, the use of array scalars ensures identical behaviour between arrays and scalars, irrespective of whether the value is inside an array or not. NumPy scalars also have many of the same methods arrays do.

Extended Precision

Python’s floating-point numbers are usually 64-bit floating-point numbers, nearly equivalent to np.float64. In some unusual situations it may be useful to use floating-point numbers with more precision. Whether this is possible in numpy depends on the hardware and on the development environment: specifically, x86 machines provide hardware floating-point with 80-bit precision, and while most C compilers provide this as their long double type, MSVC (standard for Windows builds) makes long double identical to double (64 bits). NumPy makes the compiler’s long double available as np.longdouble (and np.clongdouble for the complex numbers). You can find out what your numpy provides with np.finfo(np.longdouble).

NumPy does not provide a dtype with more precision than C long doubles; in particular, the 128-bit IEEE quad precision data type (FORTRAN’s REAL*16) is not available.

For efficient memory alignment, np.longdouble is usually stored padded with zero bits, either to 96 or 128 bits. Which is more efficient depends on hardware and development environment; typically on 32-bit systems they are padded to 96 bits, while on 64-bit systems they are typically padded to 128 bits. np.longdouble is padded to the system default; np.float96 and np.float128 are provided for users who want specific padding. In spite of the names, np.float96 and np.float128 provide only as much precision as np.longdouble, that is, 80 bits on most x86 machines and 64 bits in standard Windows builds.

Be warned that even if np.longdouble offers more precision than python float, it is easy to lose that extra precision, since python often forces values to pass through float. For example, the % formatting operator requires its arguments to be converted to standard python types, and it is therefore impossible to preserve extended precision even if many decimal places are requested. It can be useful to test your code with the value 1 + np.finfo(np.longdouble).eps.