How to convert numpy.recarray to numpy.array?

By "normal array" I take it you mean a NumPy array of homogeneous dtype. Given a recarray, such as:

>>> a = np.array([(0, 1, 2),
              (3, 4, 5)],[('x', int), ('y', float), ('z', int)]).view(np.recarray)
rec.array([(0, 1.0, 2), (3, 4.0, 5)], 
      dtype=[('x', '<i4'), ('y', '<f8'), ('z', '<i4')])

we must first make each column have the same dtype. We can then convert it to a "normal array" by viewing the data by the same dtype:

>>> a.astype([('x', '<f8'), ('y', '<f8'), ('z', '<f8')]).view('<f8')
array([ 0.,  1.,  2.,  3.,  4.,  5.])

---

astype returns a new numpy array. So the above requires additional memory in an amount proportional to the size of a. Each row of a requires 4+8+4=16 bytes, while a.astype(...) requires 8*3=24 bytes. Calling view requires no new memory, since view just changes how the underlying data is interpreted.

a.tolist() returns a new Python list. Each Python number is an object which requires more bytes than its equivalent representation in a numpy array. So a.tolist() requires more memory than a.astype(...).

Calling a.astype(...).view(...) is also faster than np.array(a.tolist()):

In [8]: a = np.array(zip(*[iter(xrange(300))]*3),[('x', int), ('y', float), ('z', int)]).view(np.recarray)

In [9]: %timeit a.astype([('x', '<f8'), ('y', '<f8'), ('z', '<f8')]).view('<f8')
10000 loops, best of 3: 165 us per loop

In [10]: %timeit np.array(a.tolist())
1000 loops, best of 3: 683 us per loop

Here is a relatively clean solution using pandas:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> import pandas as pd
>>> a = np.recarray((2,), dtype=[('x', int), ('y', float), ('z', int)])
>>> arr = pd.DataFrame(a).to_numpy()
>>> arr
array([[9.38925058e+013, 0.00000000e+000, 1.40380704e+014],
       [1.40380704e+014, 6.93572751e-310, 1.40380484e+014]])
>>> arr.shape
(2, 3)
>>> arr.dtype
dtype('float64')

First the data from the recarray are loaded into a pd.DataFrame, then the data are exported using the DataFrame.to_numpy method. As we can see, this method call has automatically converted all of the data to type float64.