Initialization
Array instantiation can provide a parameter to describe the allowed data type, and can also have an initial data sequence stored in the array.
import array import binascii s = 'This is the array.' a = array.array('c', s) print 'As string:', s print 'As array :', a print 'As hex :', binascii.hexlify(a)
The array is configured to contain a sequence of bytes, initialized with a simple string.
>>> ================================ RESTART ================================ >>> As string: This is the array. As array : array('c', 'This is the array.') As hex : 54686973206973207468652061727261792e
Processing Arrays
Similar to other python sequences, arrays can be expanded and processed in the same way.
import array import pprint a = array.array('i', xrange(3)) print 'Initial :', a a.extend(xrange(3)) print 'Extended:', a print 'slice: :', a[2:5] print 'Itetator:' print list(enumerate(a))
Supported operations include sharding, iteration, and adding elements to the end.
>>> ================================ RESTART ================================ >>> Initial : array('i', [0, 1, 2]) Extended: array('i', [0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2]) slice: : array('i', [2, 0, 1]) Itetator: [(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 0), (4, 1), (5, 2)]
Arrays and files
The contents of an array can be written to a file or an array read from a file using dedicated built-in methods for efficient reading/writing of files.
import array import binascii import tempfile a = array.array('i', xrange(5)) print 'A1: ',a output = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile() a.tofile(output.file) output.flush with open(output.name, 'rb') as input: raw_input = input.read() print 'Raw Contents:', binascii.hexlify(raw_data) input.seek(0) a2 = array.array('i') a2.fromfile(input, len(a)) print 'A2: ', a2
Candidate Byte Order
If the data in the array is not in inherent byte order, or needs to be swapped before being sent to a system with a different byte order, you can convert the entire array in python without iterating through each element.
import array import binascii def to_hex(a): chars_per_item = a.itemsize * 2 hex_version = binascii.hexlify(a) num_chunks = len(hex_version) / chars_per_item for i in xrange(num_chunks): start = i * chars_per_item end = start + chars_per_item yield hex_version[start:end] a1 = array.array('i', xrange(5)) a2 = array.array('i', xrange(5)) a2.byteswap() fmt = '%10s %10s %10s %10s' print fmt % ('A1_hex', 'A1', 'A2_hex', 'A2') print fmt % (('-' * 10,) * 4) for value in zip(to_hex(a1), a1, to_hex(a2), a2): print fmt % value
byteswap() will swap the byte order of elements in the C array, which is much more efficient than looping through data in python.
>>> ================================ RESTART ================================ >>> A1_hex A1 A2_hex A2 ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 00000000 0 00000000 0 01000000 1 00000001 16777216 02000000 2 00000002 33554432 03000000 3 00000003 50331648 04000000 4 00000004 67108864