load a certain number of rows from csv with numpy

Question

I have a very long file and I only need parts, a slice, of it. There is new data coming in so the file will potentially get longer.

To load the data from the CSV I u

Answer 1

You could get the slice using itertools, taking the column using itemgetter:

import  numpy as np
from operator import itemgetter
import csv
with open(filename) as f:
   from itertools import islice,imap
   r = csv.reader(f)
   np.genfromtxt(imap(itemgetter(1),islice(r,  start, end+1)))

For python3, you can use fromiter with the code above you need to specify the dtype:

import numpy as np
from operator import itemgetter
import csv
with open("sample.txt") as f:
   from itertools import islice
   r = csv.reader(f)
   print(np.fromiter(map(itemgetter(0), islice(r,  start, end+1)), dtype=float))

As in the other answer you can also pass the islice object directly to genfromtxt but for python3 you will need to open the file in binary mode:

with open("sample.txt", "rb") as f:
    from itertools import islice
    print(np.genfromtxt(islice(f, start, end+1), delimiter=",", usecols=cols))

Interestingly, for multiple columns using itertools.chain and reshaping is over twice as efficient if all your dtypes are the same:

from itertools import islice,chain
with open("sample.txt") as f:
   r = csv.reader(f)
   arr =np.fromiter(chain.from_iterable(map(itemgetter(0, 4, 10), 
                                            islice(r,  4, 10))), dtype=float).reshape(6, -1) 

On you sample file:

In [27]: %%timeit
with open("sample.txt", "rb") as f:
    (np.genfromtxt(islice(f, 4, 10), delimiter=",", usecols=(0, 4, 10),dtype=float))
   ....: 

10000 loops, best of 3: 179 µs per loop

In [28]: %%timeit
with open("sample.txt") as f:
   r = csv.reader(f)                                                               (np.fromiter(chain.from_iterable(map(itemgetter(0, 4, 10), islice(r,  4, 10))), dtype=float).reshape(6, -1))

10000 loops, best of 3: 86 µs per loop