primary support for compact arrays is in module named array that module defines classalso named arrayproviding compact storage for arrays of primitive data types portrayal of such an array of integers is shown in figure figure integers stored compactly as elements of python array the public interface for the array class conforms mostly to that of python list howeverthe constructor for the array class requires type code as first parameterwhich is character that designates the type of data that will be stored in the array as tangible examplethe type codei designates an array of (signedintegerstypically represented using at least -bits each we can declare the array shown in figure asprimes arrayi [ ]the type code allows the interpreter to determine precisely how many bits are needed per element of the array the type codes supported by the array moduleas shown in table are formally based upon the native data types used by the programming language (the language in which the the most widely used distribution of python is implementedthe precise number of bits for the data types is system-dependentbut typical ranges are shown in the table code data type signed char unsigned char unicode char signed short int unsigned short int signed int unsigned int signed long int unsigned long int float float typical number of bytes or or or table type codes supported by the array module the array module does not provide support for making compact arrays of userdefined data types compact arrays of such structures can be created with the lowerlevel support of module named ctypes (see section for more discussion of the ctypes module