The Scipy.io (Input and Output) package provides a wide range of functions to work around with different format of files. Some of these formats are −

• Matlab
• IDL
• Matrix Market
• Wave
• Arff
• Netcdf, etc.

Let us discuss in detail about the most commonly used file formats −

MATLAB

Following are the functions used to load and save a .mat file.

Let us consider the following example.

import scipy.io as sio
import numpy as np

#Save a mat file
vect = np.arange(10)
sio.savemat(''array.mat'', {''vect'':vect})

#Now Load the File
mat_file_content = sio.loadmat(‘array.mat’)
Print mat_file_content

The above program will generate the following output.

{
   ''vect'': array([[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]]), ''__version__'': ''1.0'', 
   ''__header__'': ''MATLAB 5.0 MAT-file Platform: posix, Created on: Sat Sep 30 
   09:49:32 2017'', ''__globals__'': []
}

We can see the array along with the Meta information. If we want to inspect the contents of a MATLAB file without reading the data into memory, use the whosmat command as shown below.

import scipy.io as sio
mat_file_content = sio.whosmat(‘array.mat’)
print mat_file_content

The above program will generate the following output.

[(''vect'', (1, 10), ''int64'')]