[Numpy-discussion] convert csv file into recarray without pre-specifying dtypes and variable names

[John Hunter]

On 7/6/07, Vincent Nijs <v-nijs at kellogg.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> I wrote the attached (small) program to read in a text/csv file with
> different data types and convert it into a recarray without having to
> pre-specify the dtypes or variables names. I am just too lazy to type-in
> stuff like that :) The supported types are int, float, dates, and strings.
>
> I works pretty well but it is not (yet) as fast as I would like so I was
> wonder if any of the numpy experts on this list might have some suggestion
> on how to speed it up. I need to read 500MB-1GB files so speed is important
> for me.

In matplotlib.mlab svn, there is a function csv2rec that does the
same.  You may want to compare implementations in case we can
fruitfully cross pollinate them.  In the examples directy, there is an
example script examples/loadrec.py