BUG: add function to check whether data is all scalar in pandas.array

Author: antareepsarkar

pandas/_libs/lib.pyi

@@ -165,6 +165,7 @@ def maybe_indices_to_slice(
     indices: npt.NDArray[np.intp],
     max_len: int,
 ) -> slice | npt.NDArray[np.intp]: ...
+def is_all_scalar(obj: list | tuple) -> bool: ...
 def is_all_arraylike(obj: list) -> bool: ...
 
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------

pandas/_libs/lib.pyx

@@ -862,6 +862,26 @@ cpdef ndarray[object] ensure_string_array(
     return result
 
 
+@cython.wraparound(False)
+@cython.boundscheck(False)
+cpdef bool is_all_scalar(obj: list | tuple):
+    # Optimized for lists and tuples
+    cdef:
+        Py_ssize_t i, n = len(obj)
+        bool all_scalars = True
+        object temp
+
+    for i in range(n):
+        temp = obj[i]
+        if isinstance(temp, (bytes, str)):
+            continue
+        elif hasattr(temp, "__iter__"):
+            all_scalars = False
+            break
+
+    return all_scalars
+
+
 def is_all_arraylike(obj: list) -> bool:
     """
     Should we treat these as levels of a MultiIndex, as opposed to Index items?

pandas/core/construction.py

@@ -322,8 +322,8 @@ def array(
         return data
 
     # to avoid returning an array of string representation of objects.
-    if dtype == StringDtype():
-        if any(not lib.is_scalar(i) for i in data):
+    if isinstance(dtype, StringDtype) and isinstance(data, (list, tuple)):
+        if not lib.is_all_scalar(data):
             raise TypeError("Values must be a 1D list-like")
 
     if isinstance(dtype, ExtensionDtype):