DOC: read_clipboard() failed for sphinx in dev-99ae9ce

[michaelaye]

See here:
http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/dev/io.html#clipboard

and scroll to the clipboard section.
Line [1215] with read_clipboard() failed.

[jreback]

@changhiskhan can you take a look?

[hayd]

probable/possible cause #3848 ?

[jreback]

could possibly be numpy 1.6.2 related

that's what's building docs

and don't think we have any tests for the clipboard stuff

shall we add some?

[cpcloud]

should there be a raise there to make sure that TextParser gets non-empty input?

[jreback]

this should work, non empty is not an error per se
something else going on

[cpcloud]

@jreback should this pass?

class TestClipboard(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.data = DataFrame(randn(5, 3))

    def test_round_trip(self):
        self.data.to_clipboard()
        expected = self.data
        result = read_clipboard()
        tm.assert_frame_equal(expected, result)

currently fails b/c columns are read as strings not ints

also should probably not print out the name of the clipboard program

[jreback]

in linux world, works for me

In [1]: df = DataFrame(randn(10,2))

In [2]: df.to_clipboard()
/usr/bin/xclip

In [3]: pd.read_clipboard()
Out[3]: 
          0         1
0  0.086303  0.412240
1 -0.574764 -0.131086
2  0.633972  0.012292
3 -1.034044 -0.115232
4 -0.709054  0.040310
5 -0.307468  0.312964
6  0.673137 -0.700172
7  1.598500 -0.409174
8 -0.511669  0.123703
9  0.010648 -0.205798

In [4]: pd.read_clipboard().dtypes
Out[4]: 
0    float64
1    float64
dtype: object

[cpcloud]

what is the dtype of the column index, i get object bc they are strings, should be int

[jreback]

I think this is expected though; things are transmitted as 'text', and they I wouldn't expect the a numeric looking column to be necessarily converted

just test with ``columns=list('AB')`

In [1]: df = DataFrame(randn(10,2))

In [2]: df.columns.dtype
Out[2]: dtype('int64')

In [3]: df.to_clipboard()
/usr/bin/xclip

In [4]: pd.read_clipboard().dtypes
Out[4]: 
0    float64
1    float64
dtype: object

In [6]: pd.read_clipboard().columns.dtype
Out[6]: dtype('O')

[cpcloud]

ok...the index is converted though....

[jreback]

I don't think we convert columns by default.....even with csv...not sure though

[cpcloud]

ur right read_csv doesn't convert, my bad

[cpcloud]

good news: looks like i managed to repro something similar

https://travis-ci.org/cpcloud/pandas/builds/9213347

bad news: i'm not sure how to work around this

[cpcloud]

is there a way to trick X into thinking there's a display

[cpcloud]

this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xvfb might work