# numpy.ma.asarray

ma.asarray(a, dtype=None, order=None)

  Convert the input to a masked array of the given data-type.

  No copy is performed if the input is already an `ndarray`. If a is a subclass of `MaskedArray`, a base class `MaskedArray` is returned.

  Parameters:
    a array_like

      Input data, in any form that can be converted to a masked array. This includes lists, lists of tuples, tuples, tuples of tuples, tuples of lists, ndarrays and masked arrays.

    dtype dtype, optional

      By default, the data-type is inferred from the input data.

    order{‘C’, ‘F’}, optional

      Whether to use row-major (‘C’) or column-major (‘FORTRAN’) memory representation. Default is ‘C’.

  Returns:
    out MaskedArray

      Masked array interpretation of a.

  See also

  `asanyarray`

    Similar to `asarray`, but conserves subclasses.

  Examples

      >>> x = np.arange(10.).reshape(2, 5)
      >>> x
      array([[0., 1., 2., 3., 4.],
             [5., 6., 7., 8., 9.]])
      >>> np.ma.asarray(x)
      masked_array(
        data=[[0., 1., 2., 3., 4.],
              [5., 6., 7., 8., 9.]],
        mask=False,
        fill_value=1e+20)
      >>> type(np.ma.asarray(x))
      <class 'numpy.ma.core.MaskedArray'>