Numpy, dash and em-dash

[van60]

I was trying to read a table with many columns in scientific notation into a numpy array. When I tried to cnvert the input strings into flating points numbers using:

M_d1 = M_d1.astype(float)

I got this error:

ValueError: could not convert string to float: np.str_('1.01E−03')

I took me a while to catch the issue: it lies in that little "−". It is not a dash ("-") , but an em-dash ("−"). I then changed all the occurrences of this em-dash in my table and now numpy runs smoothly, thus it does not recognize em-dash.

[Pedroski55]

Can confirm: big dash is not little dash:

ord('−') # 8722
ord('-') # 45
chr(8722) # '−'
chr(45) # '-'

When I use Chinese input, pressing Shift and dash gets me this super-dash!

Output:
——

which is 2 of these:

ord("—") # 8212

Dashed if I know why!