Exporting/Importing a Table of complex numbers

Question

I'm generating a long table of list of the form:

PN={{1,2,1+i},{3.5,2.6,2}...},{...},...

Using:

Export["PN.dat", PN, "Table"]

Seems to do the job of exporting, but then using:

PN = Import["PN.dat", "Table"] or PN = ReadList["PN.dat"]

Can't reconstruct the same List, the first way considers the imaginary number i as something else "I", while the second one returns insane data like:

{{-1., -2.6464*10^-40, 0. + 2.76621*10^18 I}, {-0.129967...

Any ideas how to do this right? (Using ToExpression Returns $Faild)

Answer 1

First, the root of $-1$ is represented as I, not i.

In any case, the technique I use to export arbitrary data structures is to compress, save, load and uncompress:

ClearAll@PN;
PN = {{1, 2, 1 + I}, {3.5, 2.6 - 0.8*I, 2}}
Export["~/Desktop/PN.txt", Compress@PN]
{#, Im@#} &@Uncompress@Import@"~/Desktop/PN.txt"

(*{{{1, 2, 1 + I}, {3.5, 2.6 - 0.8 I, 2}}, {{0, 0, 1}, {0, -0.8, 0}}}*)