How can I store binary values with trailing nulls in a numpy array?

Question

I'm trying to store fixed width binary data in a numpy array. However, if my data has trailing nulls, they get stripped. They do work if I use the void type, but I want to keep them as byte strings. Is there a way to do this?

>>> import numpy as np

# Works
>>> varr = np.array([(b'abc\x00\x00',), (b'de\x00\x00\x00',)], dtype='V5')
[[[97 98 99  0  0]]
 [[100 101   0   0   0]]]

# Strips nulls
>>> sarr = np.array([(b'abc\x00\x00',), (b'de\x00\x00\x00',)], dtype='S5')
[[b'abc']
 [b'de']]

Answer 1

It dawned on me that I could side-step numpy's processing of the strings by specifying the type as an object.

>>> np.array([(b'abc\x00\x00',), (b'de\x00\x00\x00',)], dtype='O')
[[b'abc\x00\x00']
 [b'de\x00\x00\x00']]