# numpy.ma.masked_array.tobytes

`masked_array.``tobytes`(fill_value=None, order='C')

  Return the array data as a string containing the raw bytes in the array.

  The array is filled with a fill value before the string conversion.

  New in version 1.9.0.

  Parameters: | fill_value : scalar, optional Value used to fill in the masked values. Default is None, in which case `MaskedArray.fill_value` is used. order : {‘C’,’F’,’A’}, optional Order of the data item in the copy. Default is ‘C’. ‘C’ – C order (row major). ‘F’ – Fortran order (column major). ‘A’ – Any, current order of array. None – Same as ‘A’.

  See also

  `ndarray.tobytes`, `tolist`, `tofile`

  Notes

  As for ndarray.tobytes, information about the shape, dtype, etc., but also about `fill_value`, will be lost.

  Examples

      >>> x = np.ma.array(np.array([[1, 2], [3, 4]]), mask=[[0, 1], [1, 0]])
      >>> x.tobytes()
      '\x01\x00\x00\x00?B\x0f\x00?B\x0f\x00\x04\x00\x00\x00'