what are all the dtypes that pandas recognizes?

For pandas, would anyone know, if any datatype apart from

(i) float64, int64 (and other variants of np.number like float32, int8 etc.)

(ii) bool

(iii) datetime64, timedelta64

such as string columns, always have a dtype of object ?

Alternatively, I want to know, if there are any datatype apart from (i), (ii) and (iii) in the list above that pandas does not make it's dtype an object?

Solution

EDIT Feb 2020 following pandas 1.0.0 release

Pandas mostly uses NumPy arrays and dtypes for each Series (a dataframe is a collection of Series, each which can have its own dtype). NumPy's documentation further explains dtype, data types, and data type objects. In addition, the answer provided by @lcameron05 provides an excellent description of the numpy dtypes. Furthermore, the pandas docs on dtypes have a lot of additional information.

The main types stored in pandas objects are float, int, bool, datetime64[ns], timedelta[ns], and object. In addition these dtypes have item sizes, e.g. int64 and int32.

By default integer types are int64 and float types are float64, REGARDLESS of platform (32-bit or 64-bit). The following will all result in int64 dtypes.

Numpy, however will choose platform-dependent types when creating arrays. The following WILL result in int32 on 32-bit platform. One of the major changes to version 1.0.0 of pandas is the introduction of pd.NA to represent scalar missing values (rather than the previous values of np.nan, pd.NaT or None, depending on usage).

Pandas extends NumPy's type system and also allows users to write their on extension types. The following lists all of pandas extension types.

1) Time zone handling

Kind of data: tz-aware datetime (note that NumPy does not support timezone-aware datetimes).

Data type: DatetimeTZDtype

Scalar: Timestamp

Array: arrays.DatetimeArray

String Aliases: 'datetime64[ns, ]'

2) Categorical data

Kind of data: Categorical

Data type: CategoricalDtype

Scalar: (none)

Array: Categorical