Reading data into numpy array from text file

Question

I have a file with some metadata, and then some actual data consisting of 2 columns with headings. Do I need to separate the two types of data before using genfromtxt in num

Answer 1

If you don't want the first n rows, try (if there is no missing data):

data = numpy.loadtxt(yourFileName,skiprows=n)

or (if there are missing data):

data = numpy.genfromtxt(yourFileName,skiprows=n)    

If you then want to parse the header information, you can go back and open the file parse the header, for example:

fh = open(yourFileName,'r')
for i,line in enumerate(fh):
    if i is n: break
    do_other_stuff_to_header(line)
fh.close()