On 12/14/2011 01:03 AM, Chris Barker wrote:
On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Ralf Gommers
<ralf.gomm...@googlemail.com <mailto:ralf.gomm...@googlemail.com>> wrote:
genfromtxt sure looks close for an API
This I don't agree with. It has a huge amount of keywords that
just confuse or intimidate a beginning user. There should be a
dead simple interface, even the loadtxt API is on the heavy side.
well, yes, though it does do a lot -- do you have a smpler one in mind?
But anyway, the really simple cases, are reallly simle, even with
genfromtxt.
I guess it's a matter of debate about what is a better API:
a few functions, each adding a layer of sophistication
or
one function, with layers of sophistication added with an array of
keyword arguments.
In either case, though I wish the multiple functionality built on the
same, well optimized core code.
-Chris
I am not sure that you can even create a simple API here as even
Python's csv module is rather complex especially when it just reads data
as strings. It also 'hides' many arguments in the Dialect class although
these are just the collection of 7 'fmtparam' arguments. It also
provides the Sniffer class that tries to find correct format that can
then be passed to the reader function. Then you still have to convert
the data into the required types - another set of arguments as well as
yet another pass through the data.
In comparison, genfromtxt can perform sniffing and both genfromtxt and
loadtxt can read and convert the data. These also add some useful
features like skipping rows (start, end and commented) and columns.
However, it could be possible to create a sniffer function and a single
data reader function leading to a 'simple' reader function but that
probably would not change the API of the underlying data reader function.
Bruce
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