Passing 2D array to functions

Question

designing an application I am looking for the best datastructure that should be used for passing 2D arrays between pure functions.

I would like them to be, by decreasing order of preference:

• immutable
• preferably from the native Python library
• easily converted to Pandas Dataframe which will be used in most (but not all) functions
• enabling fast execution (read) times.

Right now I am leaning towards tuple of tuples:

data=(("header a", "header b", "header c"), (1, 2, 3), (2, 3, 5))

but the idea of converting them to pandas dataframe like this:

df = pd.DataFrame(data=data[1:], columns=data[0])

does not quite feel the most Pythonic.

What would be the best "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."?

Answer 1

Use immutable numpy arrays.

Immutable, fast, de facto standard python library for numeric arrays, works well with Pandas...