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Customizing your NumPy import

What if there are rows, such as a header, that we wish to not import? What if our file has a delimiter other than a comma? What if you only wish to import particular columns?

There are a number of arguments that np.loadtxt() takes that you'll find useful: delimiter changes the delimiter that loadtxt() is expecting, for example, ',' and '\t' for comma-delimited and tab-delimited respectively; skiprows allows you to specify how many rows you wish to skip; usecols takes a list of the indices of the columns you wish to keep.

The file that you'll be importing, digits_header.txt

  • has a header;
  • is tab-limited.

This exercise is part of the course

Importing Data in Python

View Course

Exercise instructions

  • Complete the arguments of np.loadtxt(): the file you're importing is tab-delimited, you want to skip the first row and you only want to import the first and third columns.
  • Complete the argument of the print() call in order to print the entire array that you just imported.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Import numpy
import numpy as np

# Assign the filename: file
file = 'digits_header.txt'

# Load the data: data
data = np.loadtxt(____, ____, skiprows=____, usecols=____)

# Print data
print(____)
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