Pandas Series property: array

An ExtensionArray in Pandas

The ExtensionArray of the data backing Pandas Series or Index.

Syntax:

Series.array

Returns: ExtensionArray - An ExtensionArray of the values stored within.
For extension types, this is the actual array.
For NumPy native types, this is a thin (no copy) wrapper around numpy.ndarray.

Following table lays out the different array types for each extension dtype within pandas.

For any 3rd-party extension types, the array type will be an ExtensionArray.
For all remaining dtypes .array will be a arrays.NumpyExtensionArray wrapping the actual ndarray stored within. If you absolutely need a NumPy array (possibly with copying / coercing data), then use Series.to_numpy() instead.

Example:

For regular NumPy types like int, and float, a PandasArray is returned.

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
pd.Series([2, 3, 4]).array

Output:

<PandasArray>
[2, 3, 4]
Length: 3, dtype: int64

Example - For extension types, like Categorical, the actual ExtensionArray is returned:

Python-Pandas Code:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
s = pd.Series(pd.Categorical(['x', 'y', 'x']))
s.array

Output:

[x, y, x]
Categories (2, object): [x, y]

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