[SciPy-user] Reading Empty Arrays

[Lorenzo Isella]

Dear All,
I have a code which saves in files called file001, file002, and so on
a set of data.
Now, each file contains a record of events which may or may not have occurred.
This is to say that, e.g., file004 can be empty.
I normally use pylab to read/write files; in my codes I normally use:

import scipy as s
import pylab as p

The problem appears when I try reading one of these arrays.
E.g.:
my_array=p.load("file004")

since then I get an error message.
These are my points:
(1) I do not know beforehand which files will be empty
(2) Since I generate a lot of them which I then post-process
automatically, I cannot select by hand which are empty and which are
not.
(3) Not saving file004 since it is empty would not be a good idea (I
read the output files sequentially when postprocessing).

If reading this file004 generated a zero-length array like the one you
have if you type:

f=s.zeros(0)

Then I would be probably fine, since in my postprocessing, certain
loops depending on the length of the array would be (rightly) skipped
if the length of the array is zero.

How can I do that? Basically, I may be in trouble if I have to
re-write the code generating the results, whereas it would be ideal
for me to be able to read empty files as zero-length arrays.
Many thanks

Lorenzo Isella