Merge pull request #19593 from rossbar/loadtxt-supports-iterables

DOC,MAINT: Update wording surrounding `fname` parameter for loadtxt/genfromtxt

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/numpy/lib/npyio.py b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
index 225b22a5c..07179fe86 100644
--- a/numpy/lib/npyio.py
+++ b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
@@ -838,10 +838,11 @@ def loadtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    fname : file, str, or pathlib.Path
-        File, filename, or generator to read.  If the filename extension is
-        ``.gz`` or ``.bz2``, the file is first decompressed. Note that
-        generators should return byte strings.
+    fname : file, str, pathlib.Path, list of str, generator
+        File, filename, list, or generator to read.  If the filename
+        extension is ``.gz`` or ``.bz2``, the file is first decompressed. Note
+        that generators must return bytes or strings. The strings
+        in a list or produced by a generator are treated as lines.
     dtype : data-type, optional
         Data-type of the resulting array; default: float.  If this is a
         structured data-type, the resulting array will be 1-dimensional, and
@@ -1081,7 +1082,8 @@ def loadtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
             fencoding = getattr(fname, 'encoding', 'latin1')
     except TypeError as e:
         raise ValueError(
-            'fname must be a string, file handle, or generator'
+            f"fname must be a string, filehandle, list of strings,\n"
+            f"or generator. Got {type(fname)} instead."
         ) from e
 
     # input may be a python2 io stream
@@ -1586,8 +1588,8 @@ def genfromtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
     ----------
     fname : file, str, pathlib.Path, list of str, generator
         File, filename, list, or generator to read.  If the filename
-        extension is `.gz` or `.bz2`, the file is first decompressed. Note
-        that generators must return byte strings. The strings
+        extension is ``.gz`` or ``.bz2``, the file is first decompressed. Note
+        that generators must return bytes or strings. The strings
         in a list or produced by a generator are treated as lines.
     dtype : dtype, optional
         Data type of the resulting array.
@@ -1806,8 +1808,9 @@ def genfromtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
         fhd = iter(fid)
     except TypeError as e:
         raise TypeError(
-            "fname must be a string, filehandle, list of strings, "
-            "or generator. Got %s instead." % type(fname)) from e
+            f"fname must be a string, filehandle, list of strings,\n"
+            f"or generator. Got {type(fname)} instead."
+        ) from e
 
     with fid_ctx:
         split_line = LineSplitter(delimiter=delimiter, comments=comments,