Convert the input a to a masked array of the given datatype.
If a is a subclass of MaskedArray, its class is conserved.
Parameters:
a : array_like
Input data, in any form that can be converted to an array. This
includes lists, lists of tuples, tuples, tuples of tuples, tuples
of lists and ndarrays.
dtype : data-type, optional
By default, the data-type is inferred from the input data.
order : {‘C’, ‘F’}, optional
Whether to use row-major (‘C’) or column-major (‘FORTRAN’) memory
representation. Defaults to ‘C’.
Returns:
out : ndarray
MaskedArray interpretation of a. No copy is performed if the input
is already an ndarray.