Portable and extended type specifiers for array module

[nnemkin]

BPO	17345
Nosy	@pfalcon, @mdickinson, @meadori, @berkerpeksag, @serhiy-storchaka, @nnemkin
Superseder	bpo-9066: Standard type codes for array.array, same as struct

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2016-10-05.09:43:55.321>
created_at = <Date 2013-03-04.08:26:17.792>
labels = ['type-feature', 'library']
title = 'Portable and extended type specifiers for array module'
updated_at = <Date 2016-10-05.09:43:55.318>
user = 'https://github.com/nnemkin'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2016-10-05.09:43:55.318>
actor = 'berker.peksag'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2016-10-05.09:43:55.321>
closer = 'berker.peksag'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2013-03-04.08:26:17.792>
creator = 'nnemkin'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 17345
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['183425', '215759', '278115']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['pfalcon', 'mark.dickinson', 'meador.inge', 'berker.peksag', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'nnemkin']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '9066'
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue17345'
versions = ['Python 3.5']

[nnemkin]

Currently array module only provides platform-dependent type specifiers.
It would be very nice to have platform-independent specifiers in addition to that, matching the struct module.
For example array('<H') -> an array of little-endian 2-byte integers.

This issue crops up every time when I use array(). Binary data usually comes in some predefined format and a manual matching to native format has to be done (assuming I want to write portable code).

A useful extra would be to support multi-element struct specifiers and present an array of tuples in this case.
For example array('iff') -> an array of tuples (int, float, float) with native types.

[pfalcon]

See also http://bugs.python.org/issue9066

[berkerpeksag]

This looks like a duplicate of bpo-9066.