Python: Issue Reading In Str From MATLAB .mat File Using H5py And NumPy

I am having difficulty loading in 'str' variables 'Et' (Endtime) and 'St' (Starttime) from a MATLAB .mat file into Python. I want identical output as in MATLAB. Instead I have had

Solution 1:

If you don't mind the variable type of etime and stime stored in file.mat and you can store them as type char instead of string, you could read them in Python by: bytes(f.get(your_variable).value).decode('utf-8'). In your case:

data = {
    "average": np.array(f.get('average')),
    "median": np.array(f.get('median')),
    "stdev": np.array(f.get('stdev')),
    "P10": np.array(f.get('p10')),
    "P90": np.array(f.get('p90')),
    "St": bytes(f.get('stime')[:]).decode('utf-8'),
    "Et": bytes(f.get('etime')[:]).decode('utf-8')
}

I'm sure there is also a way of reading string type, but this might be the simplest solution.

Solution 2:

In Octave

>> x = 1:10;
>> y = reshape(1:12, 3,4);
>> et = '0101121200000';
>> xt = 'a string';
>> save -hdf5 testh5.mat x y et xt

In a numpy session:

In [130]: f = h5py.File('testh5.mat','r')
In [131]: list(f.keys())
Out[131]: ['et', 'x', 'xt', 'y']
In [132]: list(f['y'].keys())
Out[132]: ['type', 'value']
In [133]: f['x/type'].value
Out[133]: b'range'
In [134]: f['y/type'].value
Out[134]: b'matrix'
In [135]: f['y/value'].value
Out[135]: 
array([[ 1.,  2.,  3.],
       [ 4.,  5.,  6.],
       [ 7.,  8.,  9.],
       [10., 11., 12.]])
In [136]: f['et/type'].value
Out[136]: b'sq_string'
In [137]: f['et/value'].value
Out[137]: 
array([[48],
       [49],
       [48],
       [49],
       [49],
       [50],
       [49],
       [50],
       [48],
       [48],
       [48],
       [48],
       [48]], dtype=int8)
In [138]: f['et/value'].value.ravel().view('S13')
Out[138]: array([b'0101121200000'], dtype='|S13')
In [139]: f['xt/value'].value.ravel().view('S8')
Out[139]: array([b'a string'], dtype='|S8')
In [140]: f.close()

how to import .mat-v7.3 file using h5py

Opening a mat file using h5py and convert data into a numpy matrix

====

bytes also works in my file

In [220]: bytes(f['xt/value'].value)
Out[220]: b'a string'
In [221]: bytes(f['et/value'].value)
Out[221]: b'0101121200000'

Solution 3:

When I need to load .mat I use scipy and it works fine:

import scipy.io
mat = scipy.io.loadmat('fileName.mat')