DOC: Update docs for numpy.genfromtxt.

Note that a list of strings can be passed as the first parameter.
The strings are treated as the lines in a file.

Closes #6247

2 files changed, 8 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/doc/source/user/basics.io.genfromtxt.rst b/doc/source/user/basics.io.genfromtxt.rst
index 11205e555..75ba8a11d 100644
--- a/doc/source/user/basics.io.genfromtxt.rst
+++ b/doc/source/user/basics.io.genfromtxt.rst
@@ -29,9 +29,9 @@ Defining the input
 The only mandatory argument of :func:`~numpy.genfromtxt` is the source of
 the data.  It can be a string corresponding to the name of a local or
 remote file, or a file-like object with a :meth:`read` method (such as an
-actual file or a :class:`StringIO.StringIO` object).  If the argument is
-the URL of a remote file, this latter is automatically downloaded in the
-current directory.
+actual file or a :class:`StringIO.StringIO` object), a list of strings, or
+a generator.  If the argument is the URL of a remote file, then the file
+is automatically downloaded to the current directory.
 
 The input file can be a text file or an archive.  Currently, the function
 recognizes :class:`gzip` and :class:`bz2` (`bzip2`) archives.  The type of
diff --git a/numpy/lib/npyio.py b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
index 12052a08e..9f90039eb 100644
--- a/numpy/lib/npyio.py
+++ b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
@@ -1271,10 +1271,12 @@ def genfromtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    fname : file or str
-        File, filename, or generator to read.  If the filename extension is
+    fname : file, str, list of str
+        File, filename, list, or generator to read.  If the filename extension is
         `.gz` or `.bz2`, the file is first decompressed. Note that
         generators must return byte strings in Python 3k.
+        The strings in a list or strings produced by a generator are treated
+        as lines.
     dtype : dtype, optional
         Data type of the resulting array.
         If None, the dtypes will be determined by the contents of each
@@ -1455,7 +1457,7 @@ def genfromtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
             fhd = iter(fname)
     except TypeError:
         raise TypeError(
-            "fname must be a string, filehandle, or generator. "
+            "fname must be a string, filehandle, list of strings, or generator. "
             "(got %s instead)" % type(fname))
 
     split_line = LineSplitter(delimiter=delimiter, comments=comments,