[Numpy-discussion] `missing` argument in genfromtxt only a string?

[Pierre GM]

On Sep 15, 2009, at 4:19 PM, Tim Michelsen wrote:

>> Check the archives of the mailing list, there's an example using
>> dateutil.parser that may be just what you need.
> How is this dateutil.parser used in timeseries?

It's left in a corner. The use of dateutil.parser comes from  
matplotlib. (genfromtxt is nothing but an extension of mlab.csv2rec).

> Can it not be used to make the dateconverter obsolte for the most  
> simple
> cases?

Not really. dateutil.parser outputs a datetime object, when we need  
Date objects in scikits.timeseries.
Now, of course, you don't have to use scikits.timeseries, and then  
dateutil.parser can be useful. But it's an external module, and we  
should try to have as few dependancies as possible.