Read CSV file to numpy array, first row as strings, rest as float

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you need the headers in the final version, but you can generate a structured array where the columns are accessed by strings like this:

data = np.genfromtxt(path_to_csv, dtype=None, delimiter=',', names=True)

and then access columns with data['col1_name'], data['col2_name'], etc.

You can keep the column names if you use the names=True argument in the function np.genfromtxt

 data = np.genfromtxt(path_to_csv, dtype=float, delimiter=',', names=True) 

Please note the dtype=float, that will convert your data to float. This is more efficient than using dtype=None, that asks np.genfromtxt to guess the datatype for you.

The output will be a structured array, where you can access individual columns by their name. The names will be taken from your first row. Some modifications may occur, spaces in a column name will be changed to _ for example. The documentation should cover most questions you could have.