BUG: Skipfooter disables decimal parameter
I ran into a bug in the read_csv importer when trying to read in a file with
a European style decimal encoding (e.g. 8.1 -> 8,2). Setting the decimal-parameter
appropriately should make this easy but in my case pandas refused to accepts any different data type than a simple object.

After a few attempts with various files and snipplets of code I nailed down the problem to the skipfooter parameter. As far as I can judge skipfooter causes the decimal parameter to be ignored. Take the following example:

In [44]:
data = 'a;b;c\n1,1;2,2;3,3\n4;5;6\n7;8;9'
data

Out[44]:
'a;b;c\n1,1;2,2;3,3\n4;5;6\n7;8;9'

In [45]:
df = pd.read_csv(io.StringIO(data), sep=";",decimal=",",dtype=np.float64)
df

Out[45]:
    a   b   c
0   1.1     2.2     3.3
1   4.0     5.0     6.0
2   7.0     8.0     9.0

3 rows × 3 columns
In [46]:
df.dtypes

Out[46]:
a    float64
b    float64
c    float64
dtype: object

Perfect - the behaviour I expected. Now let’s add as single line a an arbitrary footer and ignore this line in the import.

In [47]:
data = data+'\nFooter'
data

Out[47]:
'a;b;c\n1,1;2,2;3,3\n4;5;6\n7;8;9\nFooter'

In [48]:
df = pd.read_csv(io.StringIO(data), sep=";",decimal=",",dtype=np.float64,skipfooter=1)
df

Out[48]:
    a   b   c
0   1,1     2,2     3,3
1   4   5   6
2   7   8   9
3 rows × 3 columns

In [49]:
df.dtypes

Out[49]:
a    object
b    object
c    object
dtype: object

Now all data type information is lost supposingly because the conversion from the comma-separated to the dot-separated values failed.  Adding an additional converter to the import (converters={'Rate': lambda x: float(x.replace('.','').replace(',','.'))}) fixes the problem and makes it more likely that the skipfooter routine is faulty.

System: iPython 2.0.0, Python 3.3.5, pandas 0.13.0
