title: numpy array of chars to string
body: <p>I have a 2D numpy char array (from a NetCDF4 file) which actually represents a list of strings.  I want to convert it into a list of strings.</p>
  
  <p>I know I can use join() to concatenate the chars into a string, but I can only find a way to do this one string at a time:</p>
  
  <pre><code>data = np.array([['a','b'],['c','d']])
  for row in data[:]:
      print ''.join(row)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But it's very slow.  How can I return an array of strings in a single command?  Thanks</p>