[Numpy-discussion] Getting number of *characters* in dtype='U' array

[David Warde-Farley]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 11:33:17AM -0400, Michael Droettboom wrote:
> Is there a way to get the number of characters in a fixed-size 'U' 
> array?  I can, of course, parse dtype.str, or divide dtype.itemsize by 
> the size of a unicode character, but neither seems terribly elegant or 
> future proof.  Does numpy provide (to Python) a method for getting this 
> that I'm just missing?
> 
> In [7]: x = np.array(u'1234')
> 
> In [8]: x.dtype
> Out[8]: dtype('<U4')
> 
> In [9]: x.dtype.str
> Out[9]: '<U4'
> 
> In [10]: x.dtype.itemsize
> Out[10]: 16

I could be misleading you but I believe x.dtype.alignment is the divisor for itemsize that you're looking for? 
It looks like it's 1 for string arrays and 4 for Unicode arrays, which would make sense...

David