cast(format[, shape])
Cast a memoryview to a new format or shape. shape defaults to [byte_length//new_itemsize], which means that the result view will be one-dimensional. The return value is a new memoryview, but the buffer itself is not copied. Supported casts are 1D -> C-contiguous and C-contiguous -> 1D.
The destination format is restricted to a single element native format in struct syntax. One of the formats must be a byte format (‘B’, ‘b’ or ‘c’). The byte length of the result must be the same as the original length.
Cast 1D/long to 1D/unsigned bytes:
>>> import array
>>> a = array.array('l', [1,2,3])
>>> x = memoryview(a)
>>> x.format
'l'
>>> x.itemsize
8
>>> len(x)
3
>>> x.nbytes
24
>>> y = x.cast('B')
>>> y.format
'B'
>>> y.itemsize
1
>>> len(y)
24
>>> y.nbytes
24
Cast 1D/unsigned bytes to 1D/char:
>>> b = bytearray(b'zyz')
>>> x = memoryview(b)
>>> x[0] = b'a'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: memoryview: invalid value for format "B"
>>> y = x.cast('c')
>>> y[0] = b'a'
>>> b
bytearray(b'ayz')
Cast 1D/bytes to 3D/ints to 1D/signed char:
>>> import struct
>>> buf = struct.pack("i"*12, *list(range(12)))
>>> x = memoryview(buf)
>>> y = x.cast('i', shape=[2,2,3])
>>> y.tolist()
[[[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5]], [[6, 7, 8], [9, 10, 11]]]
>>> y.format
'i'
>>> y.itemsize
4
>>> len(y)
2
>>> y.nbytes
48
>>> z = y.cast('b')
>>> z.format
'b'
>>> z.itemsize
1
>>> len(z)
48
>>> z.nbytes
48
Cast 1D/unsigned char to 2D/unsigned long:
>>> buf = struct.pack("L"*6, *list(range(6)))
>>> x = memoryview(buf)
>>> y = x.cast('L', shape=[2,3])
>>> len(y)
2
>>> y.nbytes
48
>>> y.tolist()
[[0, 1, 2], [3, 4, 5]]
New in version 3.3.
Changed in version 3.5: The source format is no longer restricted when casting to a byte view.
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