NPY File

Binary files with the extension .NPY contain data arrays from NumPy, which is a package of the Python programming language. These files can be read independently of the platform on which they were saved. They store a single array including information about the data type and their values.

Files in the .NPY format can hold any individual arrays used in applications or scripts of Python with the NumPy package.

The format of these files allows saving complete information about the shape and dtype of the data. This enables the reconstruction - loading of the array on any other computer. Data stored in .NPY files:

• may represent all types of arrays, including those with objects or nested records,
• are represented in a binary, native mode,
• allow for memory mapping,
• facilitate reverse engineering of programs - .NPY is designed to be as simple as possible.

Reading and writing data to files is intuitive thanks to a series of available functions from the NumPy package. The version of the format is independent of the version of the NumPy package that is intended to handle it.

Way to Store Multiple NumPy Arrays

Files with the extension .NPY can also be part of a .NPZ package. This is a ZIP-compressed directory containing multiple .NPY files corresponding to individual tables. Therefore, it possesses the same properties as files in the NPY data format. The format has several versions and is continuously developed, maintaining backward compatibility.