Hi, The following will cause a bus error on a big endian machine (Solaris 10 Sun in this case):

Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Jun 29 2007, 15:29:55) [C] on sunos5 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

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import numpy o = numpy.ndarray(shape=3,dtype=[('SEGMENT', '|S4'), ('SPEC_FOUND', '|i1')]) o1 = o.getfield(numpy.dtype('|S4'),0) print o1[0] UXÐ print o1[1] 4 print o1[2] NT print o1 Bus error (core dumped)

There are no issues on Linux or Mac OS X Intel based systems. This example was done on the latest svn version of numpy (r1.0.5.dev47360). Does anyone have an idea of what may have broken? Thank you for your time and help, Chris -- Christopher Hanley Systems Software Engineer Space Telescope Science Institute 3700 San Martin Drive Baltimore MD, 21218 (410) 338-4338