Python: how do you store a sparse matrix using python?

Question

I have got an output using sparse matrix in python, i need to store this sparse matrix in my hard disk, how can i do it? if i should create a database then how should i do?? thi

Answer 1

Depending on the size of the sparse matrix, I tend to just use cPickle to pickle the array:

import cPickle
f = open('spmatrix.pkl','wb')
cPickle.dump(your_matrix,f,-1)
f.close()

If I'm dealing with really large datasets then I tend to use netcdf4-python

Edit:

To then access the file again you would:

f = open('spmatrix.pkl','rb') # open the file in read binary mode
# load the data in the .pkl file into a new variable spmat
spmat = cPickle.load(f) 
f.close()