Hi all, I'd like to use fromfile() to read text files that look like: 23.4, 123.43 456.321, 9568.00 32.0, 134.4 so they are comma-separated values, but separated by newlines. I tried this code: import numpy as np file = "fromfiletest.txt" a = np.fromfile(file, dtype=np.float, sep=",", count=6) print a and got: 6 items requested but only 2 read [ 23.4 123.43] So, fromfile is looking for commas, and when there is a newline, instead of a comma, it stops looking. This kind of kills the point of fromfile for any text files other than whitespace - delimited ( i assume passing in " " for sep will get you an y whitespace -- it does seem to work for spaces and newlines, anyway). Yes, I know there is loadtext() and any number of other solutions, but they are all processing line in python, and that is a lot slower when reading big files. I thought fromtext() did this, and in any case, it could -- it would be a simple a blazingly fast way to red many common text formats. I think it was inspired by some code I posted a couple years back that would work with virtually any separator. That code only did double arrays, but it was fast and easy to use for the easy cases. It used C fscanf to simple get "the next number" then is would skip along 'till it found another thing it could parse as a number. since C's fscanf already skips whitespace, couldn't sep be interpreted as "this character and white space"? Or maybe be able to pass in a list of separators? -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov