Numpy Fromfile

This article will discuss saving and reading a NumPy array to and from a binary file.

NumPy tofile()

The NumPy tofile() function allows you to save an array to a text or binary file. Since we are interested in binary files, let us learn how we can use this function.

The function syntax is as shown:

The function parameters are as illustrated below:

1. fid – refers to an open file object or path to file.
2. sep – specifies the separator between the array items. For binary files, this is equal to file.write(a.tobytes()) where a is the input array.
3. Format – specifies the format string for text file output.

An example is as shown below:

In the example above, we have a simple program that generates an array using the random function.

The resulting array is as shown:

To save the array to a binary file using the tofile() function, we can do this:

This should create a new binary file holding the input array.

NumPy fromfile

To load the data stored in a binary file, we can use the fromfile function. The function has a syntax as shown:

Check the docs for more info.

In the example, to load the file, we can run:

This should return the array stored in the binary file.