Q:

Converting 16-bit integer to 32-bit floating-point

I am trying to port a portion of a code written in a different language (an obscure one called Igor Pro by Wavemetrics for those of you have heard of it) to Python.
In this code, there is a conversion of a data type from a 16-bit integer (read in from a 16-bit, big endian binary file) to single-precision (32-bit) floating-point. In this program, the conversion is as follows:
Signed 16-bit integer:
print tmp
tmp[0]={-24160,18597,-24160,18597,-24160}

converted to 32-bit floating-point:
Redimension/S/E=1 tmp
print tmp
tmp[0]={339213,339213,5.79801e-41,0,0}

The /S flag/option indicates that the data type of tmp should be float32 instead of int16. However, I believe the important flag/option is /E=1, which is said to "Force reshape without converting or moving data."
In Python, the conversion is as follows:
>>> tmp[:5]
array([-24160,  18597, -24160,  18597, -24160], dtype=int16)

>>> tmp.astype('float32')
array([-24160.,  18597., -24160., ...,  18597., -24160.,  18597.], dtype=float32)

Which is what I expect, but I need to find a function/operation that emulates the /E=1 option in the original code above. Is there an obvious way in which -24160 and 18597 would both be converted to 339213? Does this have anything to do with byteswap or newbyteorder or something else?

A:

import numpy
tmp=numpy.array([-24160,18597,-24160,18597,-24160, 0], numpy.int16)
tmp.dtype = numpy.float32
print tmp

Result:
[  3.39213000e+05   3.39213000e+05   5.79801253e-41]

I had to add a zero to the list of value because there are an odd number of values. It cannot interpret those as 32 bit floats since there 5 16 bit values. 

