It used to be tricky to read files like this one with Matlab. I don't know whether The Mathworks provided a solution in a recent release, but I don't think so. I attach a file, which is on-going-work, but it seems to do the job. The file may be called in two ways.
cac = read_fixed_format( 'CHLMIN00.TXT' ...
, '%10f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f%9f' ...
, 'Headerlines',1 );
cac = read_fixed_format( 'CHLMIN00.TXT', '%10f12(%9f)', 'Headerlines',1 );
test
>> cac{3}'
ans =
Columns 1 through 9
3.4000 3.9000 4.4000 3.1000 2.8000 2.2000 3.1000 3.6000 3.5000
Columns 10 through 18
3.9000 4.2000 3.9000 3.3000 3.3000 5.0000 6.1000 5.0000 5.6000
Columns 19 through 27
4.4000 3.9000 2.8000 3.9000 4.7000 3.9000 3.9000 4.4000 5.0000
Columns 28 through 31
5.0000 5.3000 NaN NaN
 
Does MATLAB offer a user friendly way to read  CHLMIN00.TXT ?   I made the test below with R2016a.
YES, interactively Import Data gets the "empty entries" right, but it seems as is the first empty line of the text file ends up as a row of NaNs at the bottom of the data.
 
HOWEVER, the function, importdata, makes a mess of the "empty entries". On the other hand, it's not confused by the first empty line.
>> data = importdata( 'CHLMIN00.TXT' );
>> whos data
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes
data 31x13 3224 double
>> data(26:end,3)'
ans =
4.4000 5.0000 5.0000 5.3000 12.2000 10.1000
>>
I'm not amused!
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