[Numpy-discussion] Re: string matrices

[Tim Hochberg]

Robert Kern wrote:

>Ryan Krauss wrote:
>  
>
>>I actually have a problem with the elements of a string matrix from
>>astype('S#').  The shorter elements in my matrix have a bunch of terms
>>like '1.0', because the matrix they started from was a float.  I need
>>to keep the float type, but want to get rid of the '.0 ' when I
>>convert the string output to latex.  I was going to check if
>>element[-2:]=='.0' but ran into this problem:
>>
>>In [15]: temp[-2:]
>>Out[15]: '\x00\x00'
>>
>>In [16]: temp.strip()
>>Out[16]: '1.0\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00'
>>
>>I think I can get rid of the \x00's by calling str(element), but is
>>this a feature or a bug? 
>>    
>>
>
>Probably both.  :-)  On the one hand, you want to be able to get a useful string
>out of the array; the nulls are just padding, and the string that you put in was
>'1.0'. However, suppose that the string you put in was '1.\x00'. Then you would
>get the "wrong" string out.
>
>However, the only real alternative is to also store an integer containing the
>length of the string with each element. That probably interferes with some of
>the uses of string arrays.
>
>  
>
>>It would be slightly cleaner for me if the
>>string matrix elements didn't have the trailing null characters (or
>>whatever those are), but this may not be possible given the underlying
>>representation.
>>    
>>
>
>You can also use temp.strip('\x00') which is a bit more explicit.
>
>  
>

Or even temp.rstrip('\x00') which works for all those time you pad the 
front of your string with '\x00' ;)

-tim