title: How to access elements of numpy ndarray?
body: <p>I'm using scipy's <code>loadmat</code> function to load a matlab data file into python.</p>
  
  <pre><code>from scipy.io import loadmat  
  
  data   = loadmat('data.mat')
  fields = data['field']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The type of <code>fields</code> is <code>numpy.ndarray</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>print 'fields type={}'.format(type(fields))
  print 'fields dtype={}'.format(fields.dtype)
  print 'fields shape={}'.format(fields.shape)
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
  <pre><code>fields type=&lt;type 'numpy.ndarray'&gt;
  fields dtype=object
  fields shape=(5,)
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I iterate over the array using <code>nditer</code>: </p>
  
  <pre><code>for x in np.nditer(fields, flags=['refs_ok']):
      print 'x={}'.format(x)
      print 'x type={}'.format(type(x))
      print 'x dtype={}'.format(x.dtype)
      print 'x shape={}'.format(x.shape)
      break
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
  <pre><code>x=[u'ACE']
  x type=&lt;type 'numpy.ndarray'&gt;
  x dtype=object
  x shape=()
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p><strong>IndexError:</strong></p>
  
  <p>If I try to access the first element of <code>x</code> I get an <code>IndexError</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>x[0]
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
  <pre><code>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  IndexError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
  &lt;ipython-input-102-8c374ae22096&gt; in &lt;module&gt;()
       17     print 'type={}'.format(type(x))
       18     print 'dtype={}'.format(x.dtype)
  ---&gt; 19     x[0]
       20     break
       21 
  
  IndexError: too many indices for array
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>How come, if <code>type(x)</code> returns <code>nump.ndarray</code> it says "too many indices for array"?</li>
  <li>How can I extract the contents of <code>x</code> into a string?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Here are the versions I'm using:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>print 'python version: {}'.format(sys.version)
  print 'numpy version: {}'.format(numpy.__version__)
  print 'scipy version: {}'.format(scipy.__version__)
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
  <pre><code>python version: 2.7.6 (default, Jun 22 2015, 17:58:13) 
  [GCC 4.8.2]
  numpy version: 1.11.0
  scipy version: 0.17.1
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>