numpy.format_parser

class numpy.format_parser(formats, names, titles, aligned=False, byteorder=None)

Class to convert formats, names, titles description to a dtype.

After constructing the format_parser object, the dtype attribute is the converted data-type: dtype = format_parser(formats, names, titles).dtype

Parameters

formatsstr or list of str

The format description, either specified as a string with comma-separated format descriptions in the form 'f8, i4, a5', or a list of format description strings in the form ['f8', 'i4', 'a5'].

namesstr or list/tuple of str

The field names, either specified as a comma-separated string in the form 'col1, col2, col3', or as a list or tuple of strings in the form ['col1', 'col2', 'col3']. An empty list can be used, in that case default field names (‘f0’, ‘f1’, …) are used.

titlessequence

Sequence of title strings. An empty list can be used to leave titles out.

alignedbool, optional

If True, align the fields by padding as the C-compiler would. Default is False.

byteorderstr, optional

If specified, all the fields will be changed to the provided byte-order. Otherwise, the default byte-order is used. For all available string specifiers, see dtype.newbyteorder.

See also

dtype, typename, sctype2char

Examples

>>> np.format_parser(['<f8', '<i4', '<a5'], ['col1', 'col2', 'col3'],
...                  ['T1', 'T2', 'T3']).dtype
dtype([(('T1', 'col1'), '<f8'), (('T2', 'col2'), '<i4'), (('T3', 'col3'), 'S5')])

names and/or titles can be empty lists. If titles is an empty list, titles will simply not appear. If names is empty, default field names will be used.

>>> np.format_parser(['f8', 'i4', 'a5'], ['col1', 'col2', 'col3'],
...                  []).dtype
dtype([('col1', '<f8'), ('col2', '<i4'), ('col3', '<S5')])
>>> np.format_parser(['<f8', '<i4', '<a5'], [], []).dtype
dtype([('f0', '<f8'), ('f1', '<i4'), ('f2', 'S5')])

Attributes

dtypedtype

The converted data-type.