Reading floats and ints from csv-like file

[Krookroo]

Hello :)

I have stored numbers in a file from another program, and I'd like to extract the values in lists to use with another python program I already wrote, here is how the data file looks like:

��1.12005000,1.11800000,14574
1.11947000,1.11811000,8285
1.12035000,1.11749000,7979
1.11812000,1.11597000,18181
1.13148000,1.11499000,30360
1.13176000,1.12344000,57786
1.12441000,1.11997000,24175
1.12261000,1.12067000,14455
1.12466000,1.12198000,10255
1.12643000,1.12209000,29588

For some unknown reason i have these strange characters at the beginning. I came up with the following code to get the values and get rid of the commas and EOL characters:

f = open('EU-1H.txt', 'r')
a = f.readline()
a = a[2:-1] #removing the two odd characters from he first line as well as the EOL character
fullarray, t = [], []

for numb in a[:-1].split(','):
    #print numb
    t.append(numb)
#print t
fullarray.append(t)

for i, line in enumerate(f):
    t = []
    for numb in line[:-1].split(','): #just making life easier by removing the EOL
        t.append(numb)
    fullarray.append(t)
    if i == 10: break #I don't need to process the whole thousands of lines to know if the code works

#print fullarray

To describe my issue, we'll just run this with the first two "print", namely "print numb" and "print t". This outputs:

1.12005000
1.11800000
14574
['1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r']

And if I try to convert to float by replacing t.append(numb) with t.append(float(numb)) I get the following output:

1.12005000
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "reader.py", line 9, in <module>
    t.append(float(numb))
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 1

To make my life easier, I wondered if I coult convert it back to a string inside the list to make the conversion to float/int later. So I tried by changing t.append(float(numb)) to t.append(str(numb)) which yielded as output:

1.12005000
1.11800000
14574
['1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r']

For some reasons, some of this code actually works when run directly in an interpreter in a terminal. Example:

>>> a = '1.12005000,1.11800000,14574' #copypasted from the source file
>>> a
'1.12005000,1.11800000,14574'
>>> a.split(',')
['1.12005000', '1.11800000', '14574']

But if I read the data from the data file:

f = open('EU-1H.txt', 'r')
a = f.readline()
a = a[2:-1]
print a
print a.split(',')

gives when run:

1.12005000,1.11800000,14574
['1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r\x00']

In interpreter:

>>> f = open('EU-1H.txt', 'r')
>>> a = f.readline()
>>> a[2:-1]
'1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00,\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00,\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r\x00'
>>> print a[2:-1]
1.12005000,1.11800000,14574
>>> a[2:-1].split(',')
['1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r\x00']
>>> print a[2:-1].split(',')
['1\x00.\x001\x002\x000\x000\x005\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x00.\x001\x001\x008\x000\x000\x000\x000\x000\x00', '\x001\x004\x005\x007\x004\x00\r\x00']

I have a lot of troubles understanding what's happening there.
My main goal is to just have something working (I expected to take no more than 10mn to write the storing algorithm and the data-retrieving one, apparently I couln't be more wrong, nothing went right), but I'd also like to understand what is going on obviously (so that I don't get stuck into this kind of issues again)
Any hints?
Thanks in advance.

Python 2.7.9 / Debian Jessie / i686