Read .mat files in Python

An import is required, import scipy.io...

import scipy.io
mat = scipy.io.loadmat('file.mat')

Neither scipy.io.savemat, nor scipy.io.loadmat work for MATLAB arrays version 7.3. But the good part is that MATLAB version 7.3 files are hdf5 datasets. So they can be read using a number of tools, including NumPy.

For Python, you will need the h5py extension, which requires HDF5 on your system.

import numpy as np
import h5py
f = h5py.File('somefile.mat','r')
data = f.get('data/variable1')
data = np.array(data) # For converting to a NumPy array