convert string numpy array to a ascii numpy matrix

Question

I have been looking for an efficient way for converting a string numpy array to a two dimensional ASCII matrix in python. So for this is the best that I could come up with

def charArrayToAsciiMatrix(strNumpyArray):
 for i in range(strNumpyArray):
    if(i==0):
        AsciiMatrix=numpy.matrix(ord[[c for c in strNumpyArray[i]]])
    else:
        AsciiMatrix=numpy.vstack(AsciiMatrix,ord[[c for c in strNumpyArray[i]]])

is there a efficient way of doing this?

Answer 1

How is this?

import numpy as np

def add_word_as_ordinal(arr, word):
    arr.extend([ord(ch) for ch in word])
    return arr

def char_array_to_ascii_matrix(char_array):
    result = np.matrix(reduce(add_word_as_ordinal, char_array, []))
    result.shape = len(char_array), len(char_array[0])
    return result

my_array = np.array("JustA Flesh Wound".split())
my_matrix = char_array_to_ascii_matrix(my_array)