NumPy .npy — int16 Little-Endian (.npy)
Nine int16 values including both type extremes, stored little-endian so the descriptor in the header reads '<i2'. It is one half of an endian pair whose values are identical and whose bytes are not.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| dtype | int16 |
| descr in header | <i2 |
| shape | (9,) |
| fortran_order | False |
| elements | 9 |
| Header descr | '<i2' |
| 4660 encodes as | 34 12 (low byte first) |
| -1 encodes as | ff ff |
| Twin | the big-endian file holds identical VALUES, different BYTES |
Specifications
- Dtype
- <i2 (little-endian int16)
- Elements
- 9
- Descr
- <i2
- Bytes Per Element
- 2
- Value4660 Bytes
- 34 12
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Load both endian twins and compare their values, then compare the raw bytes that follow each header.
- Expected result
- The decoded arrays are equal element for element, but 4660 appears as the byte pair 34 12 here and 12 34 in the big-endian twin.
What is a .npy file?
NPY is NumPy's native binary format for a single array. A short header records the dtype, shape, and memory order, followed by the raw array bytes, so an array round-trips exactly without any text parsing. It is the standard way to persist embeddings, tensors, and numeric matrices in the Python data stack.
How to use this file
Use an example .npy to test array loaders (numpy.load), tensor and embedding pipelines, and converters between .npy, JSON, and columnar formats like Parquet.
How to use this file for testing
“NumPy .npy — int16 Little-Endian (.npy)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Scientific data, Serialization testing. Citation catalogs (BibTeX, RIS), chemistry structures (MDL Molfile, PDB), and gridded binary data (NetCDF, FITS) — for testing reference managers, molecule viewers, and scientific-data loaders.
Documented properties for this file: NPY · 146 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Scientific fixtures are small, valid, and fully synthetic — no real organism, patient, sample, or observation. Point your parser or loader at the file and check it reads the documented records, variables, or headers; binary formats ship a readable twin or metadata listing for comparison.
Related files
- npyNumPy .npy — Boolean Mask (.npy)A 6x10 boolean mask stored as one byte per element, because .npy does not bit-pack booleans however tempting that assumption is. The True cells follow a simple divisible-by-three rule so a mis-decode is obvious rather than plausible.

- npyNumPy .npy — C Order (Row-Major) (.npy)A 4x6 matrix of 0..23 stored row-major, so the byte sequence begins with the first row. It is one half of a memory-order pair that is indistinguishable from its twin unless the header's fortran_order flag is honoured.

- npyNumPy .npy — complex128 Spectrum (.npy)The real FFT of a 64-sample sine stored as complex128, where each element is an interleaved pair of doubles rather than two separate planes. Readers without a complex type usually flatten it, which doubles the reported length and shifts the peak bin.

- npyNumPy .npy — datetime64 Seconds Since the Epoch (.npy)Five timestamps stored as datetime64 with second resolution, where the unit is part of the dtype descriptor and the values on disk are plain int64 epoch seconds. Dropping the unit turns 2026-01-01 into the integer 1767225600 without any complaint.

- npyNumPy .npy — float16 at Its Limits (.npy)Every structurally interesting float16 value in one array: one plus epsilon, the largest finite value, the smallest normal and subnormal, negative zero, infinity and a NaN. It is the compact half-precision counterpart to the float32 and float64 boundary fixtures.

- npyNumPy .npy — float32 3-D Cube (.npy)The identical temperature field carried by the CF NetCDF and HDF5 fixtures, stored as a bare float32 .npy. Comparing the three shows exactly what a plain array container loses: the numbers survive, the units and axes do not.

Generated by generation/scientific.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.