Dump a NumPy array into a csv file

Writing record arrays as CSV files with headers requires a bit more work.

This example reads from a CSV file (example.csv) and writes its contents to another CSV file (out.csv).

import numpy as np

# Write an example CSV file with headers on first line
with open('example.csv', 'w') as fp:
    fp.write('''\
col1,col2,col3
1,100.1,string1
2,222.2,second string
''')

# Read it as a Numpy record array
ar = np.recfromcsv('example.csv', encoding='ascii')
print(repr(ar))
# rec.array([(1, 100.1, 'string1'), (2, 222.2, 'second string')], 
#           dtype=[('col1', '<i8'), ('col2', '<f8'), ('col3', '<U13')])

# Write as a CSV file with headers on first line
with open('out.csv', 'w') as fp:
    fp.write(','.join(ar.dtype.names) + '\n')
    np.savetxt(fp, ar, '%s', ',')

Note that the above example cannot handle values which are strings with commas. To always enclose non-numeric values within quotes, use the csv built-in module:

import csv

with open('out2.csv', 'w', newline='') as fp:
    writer = csv.writer(fp, quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
    writer.writerow(ar.dtype.names)
    writer.writerows(ar.tolist())

You can use pandas. It does take some extra memory so it's not always possible, but it's very fast and easy to use.

import pandas as pd 
pd.DataFrame(np_array).to_csv("path/to/file.csv")

if you don't want a header or index, use to_csv("/path/to/file.csv", header=None, index=None)

tofile is a convenient function to do this:

import numpy as np
a = np.asarray([ [1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9] ])
a.tofile('foo.csv',sep=',',format='%10.5f')

The man page has some useful notes:

This is a convenience function for quick storage of array data. Information on endianness and precision is lost, so this method is not a good choice for files intended to archive data or transport data between machines with different endianness. Some of these problems can be overcome by outputting the data as text files, at the expense of speed and file size.

Note. This function does not produce multi-line csv files, it saves everything to one line.

numpy.savetxt saves an array to a text file.

import numpy
a = numpy.asarray([ [1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9] ])
numpy.savetxt("foo.csv", a, delimiter=",")