# xarray.Variable.astype

`Variable.``astype`(dtype, order='K', casting='unsafe', subok=True, copy=True)

  Copy of the array, cast to a specified type.

  Parameters:

  - dtype (str or dtype) – Typecode or data-type to which the array is cast.
  - order ({'C', 'F', 'A', 'K'}, optional) – Controls the memory layout order of the result. ‘C’ means C order, ‘F’ means Fortran order, ‘A’ means ‘F’ order if all the arrays are Fortran contiguous, ‘C’ order otherwise, and ‘K’ means as close to the order the array elements appear in memory as possible. Default is ‘K’.
  - casting ({'no', 'equiv', 'safe', 'same_kind', 'unsafe'}, optional) –

    Controls what kind of data casting may occur. Defaults to ‘unsafe’ for backwards compatibility.

    > - ’no’ means the data types should not be cast at all.
    > - ’equiv’ means only byte-order changes are allowed.
    > - ’safe’ means only casts which can preserve values are allowed.
    > - ’same_kind’ means only safe casts or casts within a kind, like float64 to float32, are allowed.
    > - ’unsafe’ means any data conversions may be done.

  - subok (bool, optional) – If True, then sub-classes will be passed-through (default), otherwise the returned array will be forced to be a base-class array.
  - copy (bool, optional) – By default, astype always returns a newly allocated array. If this is set to false, and the dtype, order, and subok requirements are satisfied, the input array is returned instead of a copy.

  Returns: | arr_t – Unless copy is False and the other conditions for returning the input array are satisfied (see description for copy input parameter), arr_t is a new array of the same shape as the input array, with dtype, order given by dtype, order.
  Return type: | ndarray

  Notes

  Changed in version 1.17.0: Casting between a simple data type and a structured one is possible only for “unsafe” casting. Casting to multiple fields is allowed, but casting from multiple fields is not.

  Changed in version 1.9.0: Casting from numeric to string types in ‘safe’ casting mode requires that the string dtype length is long enough to store the max integer/float value converted.

  Raises: | `ComplexWarning` – When casting from complex to float or int. To avoid this, one should use `a.real.astype(t)`.

  Examples

      >>> x = np.array([1, 2, 2.5])
      >>> x
      array([1. ,  2. ,  2.5])

      >>> x.astype(int)
      array([1, 2, 2])