# \`reinterpret\` to a single value from an array of a smaller data type

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/reinterpret-to-a-single-value-from-an-array-of-a-smaller-data-type/9932>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [March 23, 2018, 11:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/reinterpret-to-a-single-value-from-an-array-of-a-smaller-data-type/9932 "2018-03-23T23:56:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 24

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ExpandingMan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/expandingman/32/866_2.png) [@ExpandingMan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ExpandingMan)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2018, 3:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/reinterpret-to-a-single-value-from-an-array-of-a-smaller-data-type/9932/24 "2018-03-26T15:58:23Z")

</div>

> [@jameson](#):
>
> seek / skip / position?

I think the problem is that the need to always ultimately resort to `read` and thereby move the position in the IO buffer every time you read from it is just way more complicated than simply representing it as a reinterpreted array. Clearly I need to look into this more thoroughly though, I may have rejected that solution too quickly when I first got into this.

I definitely tended to have it in my mind that `read` actually deletes data from the buffer, but I suppose that is never true. I’m definitely too ignorant about this and need to benchmark a prototype that uses only `IO` and no unsafe methods.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/reinterpret-to-a-single-value-from-an-array-of-a-smaller-data-type/9932)._