Converting list to be float instead of strings when reading from file

Question

I am loading data from a file and want it to be stored in a matrix. I am looking to read the data in as a float rather than a string. How do I do this?

with open("hw2_data.txt", "r") as dataFile: 
    X = [line.split() for line in dataFile]

I have tried various things with float() but cannot seem to figure it out.

Please share what you’ve tried. Have you done any research? Also, variable and function names should generally follow the `lower_case_with_underscores` style. — AMC, Mar 06 '20 at 03:00

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '20 at 01:25

Use a nested listcomp or map to do this:

X = [[float(x) for x in line.split()] for line in dataFile]

or:

X = [[*map(float, line.split())] for line in dataFile]

[*map(...)] is just the unpacking way of spelling list(map(...)); you can use either on any supported version of Python 3.

Converting list to be float instead of strings when reading from file

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