I’m reading a binary file using numpy and wondering whether I should use repeated calls to numpy.fromfile or reading from the file manually and calling numpy.frombuffer:
# Alternative 1: fromfilewith open(path, 'rb') as f: num = numpy.fromfile(f, 'u4', 1)[0] l = numpy.fromfile(f, 'u4', num) o = numpy.fromfile(f, 'u4', num) m = numpy.fromfile(f, 'f4', num) c = numpy.fromfile(f, '3f4', num) s = numpy.fromfile(f, '3u4', num)# Alternative 2: read & frombufferdef fread(f, fmt): dtype = numpy.dtype(fmt) return numpy.frombuffer(f.read(dtype.itemsize), dtype)[0]with open(path, 'rb') as f: num = fread(f, 'u4') l = fread(f, f'({num},)u4') o = fread(f, f'({num},)u4') m = fread(f, f'({num},)f4') c = fread(f, f'({num},3)f4') s = fread(f, f'({num},3)u4')Is there a difference (performance or otherwise) between these two methods?