scipy.io.loadmat

scipy.io.loadmat(file_name, mdict=None, appendmat=True, **kwargs)

Load MATLAB file

Parameters:

file_name : str

Name of the mat file (do not need .mat extension if appendmat==True) Can also pass open file-like object.

m_dict : dict, optional

Dictionary in which to insert matfile variables.

appendmat : bool, optional

True to append the .mat extension to the end of the given filename, if not already present.

byte_order : str or None, optional

None by default, implying byte order guessed from mat file. Otherwise can be one of (‘native’, ‘=’, ‘little’, ‘<’, ‘BIG’, ‘>’).

mat_dtype : bool, optional

If True, return arrays in same dtype as would be loaded into MATLAB (instead of the dtype with which they are saved).

squeeze_me : bool, optional

Whether to squeeze unit matrix dimensions or not.

chars_as_strings : bool, optional

Whether to convert char arrays to string arrays.

matlab_compatible : bool, optional

Returns matrices as would be loaded by MATLAB (implies squeeze_me=False, chars_as_strings=False, mat_dtype=True, struct_as_record=True).

struct_as_record : bool, optional

Whether to load MATLAB structs as numpy record arrays, or as old-style numpy arrays with dtype=object. Setting this flag to False replicates the behavior of scipy version 0.7.x (returning numpy object arrays). The default setting is True, because it allows easier round-trip load and save of MATLAB files.

verify_compressed_data_integrity : bool, optional

Whether the length of compressed sequences in the MATLAB file should be checked, to ensure that they are not longer than we expect. It is advisable to enable this (the default) because overlong compressed sequences in MATLAB files generally indicate that the files have experienced some sort of corruption.

variable_names : None or sequence

If None (the default) - read all variables in file. Otherwise variable_names should be a sequence of strings, giving names of the matlab variables to read from the file. The reader will skip any variable with a name not in this sequence, possibly saving some read processing.

Returns:

mat_dict : dict

dictionary with variable names as keys, and loaded matrices as values

Notes

v4 (Level 1.0), v6 and v7 to 7.2 matfiles are supported.

You will need an HDF5 python library to read matlab 7.3 format mat files. Because scipy does not supply one, we do not implement the HDF5 / 7.3 interface here.