np.genfromtxt returns string with 'b'

Question

I am learning about different functions of NUmpy, And I have a dummy dataset here named as 100-Sales-Records.

Now I want to read it using np.genfromtxt. My code to read it is

df3 = np.genfromtxt('100 Sales Records.csv', delimiter=',',names=True, dtype=None)

Because it is a 'csv' file and have strings as well as float. Now the Output of

pd.DataFramge(df3).head() is

WHich you can see that all strings have b in front of them. WHat is this b and how to remove it?

Answer 1

The answer is that b before strings means that it is a byte object normally returned with utf-8 encoding. It is a bytes object.

To remove it, there is a parameter in genfromtxt that is encoding, set it to utf-8

i.e

df3 = np.genfromtxt('100 Sales Records.csv', delimiter=',',names=True, dtype=None, encoding='utf-8')

This will give you the desired results.