What are the Python types accepted by MATLAB?

I tried the following, using both MATLAB R2017b and R2017a from Python 2.7 IDLE:

>>> import numpy as np
>>> image = np.array([[1.0, 0.0, 0.0], [0.0, 1.0, 2.0]], dtype="uint8")
>>> image
array([[1, 0, 0],
       [0, 1, 2]], dtype=uint8)
>>> g = eng.mean(image)

However, I received the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<pyshell#19>", line 1, in <module>

    g = eng.mean(image)

File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\matlab\engine\matlabengine.py", line 73, in __call__

    out=_stdout, err=_stderr)

TypeError: unsupported Python data type: numpy.ndarray

Does it mean that non built-in Python types (such as NumPy) are not supported by MATLAB?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The MATLAB interoperability features only support built-in Python types. For instance, NumPy arrays are not part of core Python and therefore they are not recognized in MATLAB.

Nevertheless, for many applications of non-built-in Python types, the MATLAB equivalent can be used. For instance, if you want to use a NumPy array, you can directly create a MATLAB Array in Python. Please find below the MATLAB documentation for it, which contains some examples about how to create multidimensional arrays as well:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/matlab-arrays-as-python-variables.html