Python: How to create an array of strings using NumPy ndarray

Question

I am trying to do handwritten digit recognition using K-Nearest Neighbours classification using scikit learn. I am creating my own dataset, and have a list of labels (where the labels are strings). The length of the list is 5000.

However, to do KNN classification, both the image data and labels have to be in numpy ndarrays. How can I convert a list of strings into a NumPy ndarray containing those strings? Any insights are appreciated.

Answer 1

just use the np.array() function as follows:

import numpy as np

string_list = ["hello", "world", "str3", "str4"]

string_ndarray = np.array(string_list)

print(string_ndarray)
print(type(string_ndarray))

Output:

['hello' 'world' 'str3' 'str4']
<class 'numpy.ndarray'>