[Numpy-discussion] Fast Reading of ASCII files

[Benjamin Root]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Ralf Gommers
<ralf.gommers at googlemail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Bruce Southey <bsouthey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> **
>> On 12/14/2011 01:03 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Ralf Gommers <
>> ralf.gommers at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>   genfromtxt sure looks close for an API
>>>>
>>>
>>> This I don't agree with. It has a huge amount of keywords that just
>>> confuse or intimidate a beginning user. There should be a dead simple
>>> interface, even the loadtxt API is on the heavy side.
>>>
>>
>> well, yes, though it does do a lot -- do you have a smpler one in mind?
>>
>> Just looking at what I normally wouldn't need for simple data files
> and/or what a beginning user won't understand at once, the `unpack` and
> `ndmin` keywords could certainly be left out. `converters` is also
> questionable. That's probably as simple as it can get.
>
>
Just my two cents (and I was one of those who championed its inclusion),
the ndmin feature is designed to prevent unexpected results that users
(particularly beginners) may encounter with their datasets.  Now, maybe it
might be difficult to tell a beginner *why* they might need to be aware of
it, but it is very easy to describe *how* to use.  "How many dimensions is
your data? Two? Ok, just set ndmin=2 and you are good to go!"

Cheers!
Ben Root
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