List of lists into numpy array

Question

How do I convert a simple list of lists into a numpy array? The rows are individual sublists and each row contains the elements in the sublist.

Answer 1

If your list of lists contains lists with varying number of elements then the answer of Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams will not work. Instead there are at least 3 options:

1) Make an array of arrays:

x=[[1,2],[1,2,3],[1]]
y=numpy.array([numpy.array(xi) for xi in x])
type(y)
>>><type 'numpy.ndarray'>
type(y[0])
>>><type 'numpy.ndarray'>

2) Make an array of lists:

x=[[1,2],[1,2,3],[1]]
y=numpy.array(x)
type(y)
>>><type 'numpy.ndarray'>
type(y[0])
>>><type 'list'>

3) First make the lists equal in length:

x=[[1,2],[1,2,3],[1]]
length = max(map(len, x))
y=numpy.array([xi+[None]*(length-len(xi)) for xi in x])
y
>>>array([[1, 2, None],
>>>       [1, 2, 3],
>>>       [1, None, None]], dtype=object)