read#

astropy.io.ascii.read(table, guess=None, **kwargs)[source]#

Read the input table and return the table. Most of the default behavior for various parameters is determined by the format argument.

Help on the read() function arguments is available as shown in this example:

from astropy.io import ascii
ascii.read.help()  # Common help for all formats
ascii.read.help("html")  # Common help plus "html" format-specific args

See also:

Parameters:

tablepython:str, python:file-like object, python:list, pathlib.Path object

Input table as a file name, file-like object, list of string[s], single newline-separated string or pathlib.Path object.

guessbool

Try to guess the table format. Defaults to None.

formatpython:str, BaseReader

Input table format

delimiterpython:str

Column delimiter string

commentpython:str

Regular expression defining a comment line in table

quotecharpython:str

One-character string to quote fields containing special characters

header_startpython:int

Line index for the header line not counting comment or blank lines. A line with only whitespace is considered blank.

data_startpython:int

Line index for the start of data not counting comment or blank lines. A line with only whitespace is considered blank.

data_endpython:int

Line index for the end of data not counting comment or blank lines. This value can be negative to count from the end.

converterspython:dict

Dictionary of converters to specify output column dtypes. Each key in the dictionary is a column name or else a name matching pattern including wildcards. The value is either a data type such as int or np.float32; a list of such types which is tried in order until a successful conversion is achieved; or a list of converter tuples (see the convert_numpy function for details).

namespython:list

List of names corresponding to each data column

include_namespython:list

List of names to include in output.

exclude_namespython:list

List of names to exclude from output (applied after include_names)

fill_valuespython:tuple, python:list of python:tuple

specification of fill values for bad or missing table values

fill_include_namespython:list

List of names to include in fill_values.

fill_exclude_namespython:list

List of names to exclude from fill_values (applied after fill_include_names)

fast_readerbool, python:str or python:dict

Whether to use the C engine, can also be a dict with options which defaults to False; parameters for options dict:

use_fast_converter: bool: enable faster but slightly imprecise floating point conversion method
exponent_style: str: One-character string defining the exponent or 'Fortran' to auto-detect Fortran-style scientific notation like '3.14159D+00' ('E', 'D', 'Q'), all case-insensitive; default 'E', all other imply use_fast_converter
chunk_sizeint: If supplied with a value > 0 then read the table in chunks of approximately chunk_size bytes. Default is reading table in one pass.
chunk_generatorbool: If True and chunk_size > 0 then return an iterator that returns a table for each chunk. The default is to return a single stacked table for all the chunks.

encodingpython:str

Allow to specify encoding to read the file (default= None).

Returns:

datTable or <generator>: Output table

Other Parameters:

inputter_clsBaseInputter: Inputter class
outputter_clsBaseOutputter: Outputter class
data_splitter_clsBaseSplitter: Splitter class to split data columns
header_splitter_clsBaseSplitter: Splitter class to split header columns