[Matplotlib-users] mlab.load and non-numeric characters

[Evan M. <eva...@gm...>]

Hi, I want to use mlab.load to load in some data:


       1) 2004/02/27 21:51:00           1     2553.51     2553.51
-99.0000N      3.217
       2) 2004/02/27 22:01:00           2     2553.47     2553.47
-99.0000N      3.217
       3) 2004/02/27 22:10:59           3     2553.45     2553.45
-99.0000N      3.218
       4) 2004/02/27 22:20:59           4     2553.46     2553.46
-99.0000N      3.223


unfortunately missing values are given as -99.000N, and these cause the
following error:


In [98]: mlab.load(site_file,skiprows=29,usecols=[4])
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)

/Users/evan/python/tools/fig_NEA_seas_paper_RAPID.py in <module>()
----> 1
      2
      3
      4
      5

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/matplotlib/mlab.pyc
in load(fname, comments, delimiter, converters, skiprows, usecols, unpack,
dtype)
   1458         if usecols is not None:
   1459             vals = splitfunc(line)
-> 1460             row = [converterseq[j](vals[j]) for j in usecols]
   1461         else:
   1462             row = [converterseq[j](val)

ValueError: invalid literal for float(): -99.00N


Is there any way around this, apart from editing all the data files to
remove every 'N'?

Many thanks, Evan