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Getting Started with Python Data Analysis

You're reading from  Getting Started with Python Data Analysis

Product type Book
Published in Nov 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785285110
Pages 188 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages

Table of Contents (15) Chapters

Getting Started with Python Data Analysis
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Introducing Data Analysis and Libraries NumPy Arrays and Vectorized Computation Data Analysis with Pandas Data Visualization Time Series Interacting with Databases Data Analysis Application Examples Machine Learning Models with scikit-learn Index

Interacting with data in text format


Text is a great medium and it's a simple way to exchange information. The following statement is taken from a quote attributed to Doug McIlroy: Write programs to handle text streams, because that is the universal interface.

In this section we will start reading and writing data from and to text files.

Reading data from text format

Normally, the raw data logs of a system are stored in multiple text files, which can accumulate a large amount of information over time. Thankfully, it is simple to interact with these kinds of files in Python.

Pandas supports a number of functions for reading data from a text file into a DataFrame object. The most simple one is the read_csv() function. Let's start with a small example file:

$ cat example_data/ex_06-01.txt
Name,age,major_id,sex,hometown
Nam,7,1,male,hcm
Mai,11,1,female,hcm
Lan,25,3,female,hn
Hung,42,3,male,tn
Nghia,26,3,male,dn
Vinh,39,3,male,vl
Hong,28,4,female,dn

Tip

The cat is the Unix shell command that can...

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