convert unicode array to numpy

Question

I have arrays of unicode strings like this

u'[(12520, 12540), (16600, 16620)]'

and need to convert these to numpy arrays. A similar question treats the problem of already having an array with unicode elements, but in my case the brackets are part of the string. Is there a way of directly converting this to a numpy array (of ints) without having to manually remove the brackets?

Where did you get these strings from? If you've got some code that printing out or otherwise stringifying a bunch of lists or arrays for you to convert back later, it's almost always better to keep the lists or arrays themselves than to convert them back and forth. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Dec 3, 2014 at 1:11
@abarnert that would for sure be better, but I'm working with published data that happens to come in this format, so no way around it in this case. — jacob
– jacob, Commented Dec 3, 2014 at 9:14
@jacob: Even then, it's important to know the actual language of the published data so you know what it's intended to mean. If it's the output of a Python repr call, then literal_eval is the exact right way to reverse that. If it's some other language which is usually but not always valid as Python source code, then using literal_eval is a bad idea. Sometimes the best you can do is guess, but that should never be your first recourse. — abarnert
– abarnert, Commented Dec 5, 2014 at 19:06

Padraic Cunningham · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-03 00:13:49Z

6

You could use literal_eval

from ast import literal_eval
import numpy as np
s=u'[(12520, 12540), (16600, 16620)]'

arr= np.array(literal_eval(s))

edited Dec 3, 2014 at 0:13

answered Dec 3, 2014 at 0:02

Padraic Cunningham

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Marcin · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-03 00:02:34Z

1

You could use literal_eval as follows:

import ast

my_str = u'[(12520, 12540), (16600, 16620)]'

my_nparray = np.array(ast.literal_eval(my_str))

print(my_nparray)

Results in:

[[12520 12540]
 [16600 16620]]

answered Dec 3, 2014 at 0:02

Marcin

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1 Comment

jacob Over a year ago

equally valid answer, of course! Can only accept one, so accepted the earlier one.

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