.. _read:

read
****


**Syntax:** :code:`read(image name, filename, data type)`

Reads an image or image sequence from disk. Determines type of file automatically.

.. note::
	In Python/pi2py2, the image name parameter is not specified, and the function returns the newly created image read from the disk.


This command can be used in the distributed processing mode. Use :ref:`distribute` command to change processing mode from local to distributed.

Arguments
---------

image name [input]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Data type:** string

Name of image in the system.

filename [input]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Data type:** string

Name (and path) of file to read or a sequence definition. If a directory name is given, all files in the directory will be read. If the a file name is given, it can contain wildcards :math:`*`, :math:`?` and :math:`@`. Wildcard :math:`*` corresponds to any sequence of characters, wildcard :math:`?` corresponds to any character, and wildcard :math:`@` corresponds to sequence of numerical digits. For example, sequence containing files xyz_000.png, xyz_001.png, xyz_002.png, etc. could be read with template xyz_@.png.

data type [input]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Data type:** string

**Default value:** ""

Data type of the image. Can be uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64, int8, int16, int32, int64, float32, or complex32. Specify empty value to infer data type from file content.