[Numpy-discussion] loadtxt raises an exception on empty file

[Maria Liukis]

Hello everybody,

I'm using numpy V1.3.0 and ran into a case when numpy.loadtxt('foo.txt') raised an exception:

>>>import numpy as np
>>>np.loadtxt('foo.txt')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/numpy/lib/io.py", line 456, in loadtxt
    raise IOError('End-of-file reached before encountering data.')
IOError: End-of-file reached before encountering data.
>>>

if provided file 'foo.txt' is empty.

Would anybody happen to know if it's a feature or a bug? I would expect it to return an empty array. 

numpy.fromfile() handles empty text files:

>>> np.fromfile('foo.txt', sep='\t\n ')
array([], dtype=float64)
>>>

Would anybody suggest a graceful way of handling empty files with numpy.loadtxt() (except for catching an IOError exception)?

Many thanks,
Masha
--------------------
liukis at usc.edu