Finwood opened a new issue, #46021: URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/46021
### Describe the enhancement requested While PyArrow supports the float16 data type, it cannot be parsed directly from Python: ```python import pyarrow as pa pa.scalar(3.1415, pa.float64()) # <pyarrow.DoubleScalar: 3.1415> pa.scalar(3.1415, pa.float32()) # <pyarrow.FloatScalar: 3.1414999961853027> pa.scalar(3.1415, pa.float16()) # Traceback (most recent call last): # File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> # File "pyarrow/scalar.pxi", line 1293, in pyarrow.lib.scalar # File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 155, in pyarrow.lib.pyarrow_internal_check_status # File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 92, in pyarrow.lib.check_status # pyarrow.lib.ArrowTypeError: Expected np.float16 instance ``` Taking the detour over numpy works, but is impractical in many cases: ```python import pyarrow as pa import numpy as np pa.scalar(np.float16(3.1415), pa.float16()) # <pyarrow.HalfFloatScalar: 3.14> ``` What would it take to add direct parsing support, to e.g. load data from JSON without having to handle float16 types differently? --- _Tested on pyarrow 19.0.1, Python 3.12.9_ ### Component(s) Python -- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the URL above to go to the specific comment. To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscr...@arrow.apache.org.apache.org For queries about this service, please contact Infrastructure at: us...@infra.apache.org