title: Python API to load various machine-learning datasets?
body: <p>Does anyone have a Python API to get various ML datasets, along the lines</p>
  
  <pre><code>X, Y, info = mldata.load( name, db=, verbose= )
  X: N x dim data, a NumPy array
  Y: N, ints for class numbers or None
  info: a dict with ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'd prefer straight python with NumPy,
  but if an Rpy function could just get data, that might be ok
  (sorry, don't speak much R).</p>
  
  <p>For a "db", a flat file would be fine, like</p>
  
  <pre><code>#! http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning-databases
  # ncol  nrow  nclass  year  name               etc.
    3  2858  2  2008   "Character+Trajectories"  Time-Series     Classification, Clus
    4   150  2  1988   "Iris"    Multivariate    Classification  Real
    8   768  2  1990   "Pima+Indians+Diabetes"   Multivariate    Classification  Inte
  ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Why just flat files instead of "real" dbs ?
  Because I can download them once, then browse, sort, awk them with near-0 effort;
  others may prefer a fancy search engine.</p>
  
  <p>Whether data is stored locally or loaded over the web is for me a dont-care.
  (Do both, env MLDATAPATH = ( local dir ... url ... ) )?</p>
  
  <p>(A basic API oughta be trivial for sites with uniform names and uniform data,
  but uniformizing e.g. uci/ml looks like quite a lot of dull work.)</p>