MATLAB: Extracting multiple sets of scientific notation data

arraydata extractionformatMATLABscientific notationsscanf

Hello all,
I am trying to extract some data for plotting and I've been struggling to get the data structered how I want it. I have a results file attached which is where I'm getting my data. I want to pull out the first section of data which represents node numbers and xyz coordinates and store this data as a Nx4 array (N happens to be 12881 for this file). I also want to pull out the very last temperature data set (at the very end, the NDTEMP block just above the RFL block) and store that as a 61×2 array.
The main problem I've been having so far is that the coordinates and temperature data is in exponential/scientific notation, and sscanf() doesn't seem to want to read them. I've tried formating sscanf() with %11.5E, %11.5e with no luck. The dimensions of the arrays come out correct if I format sscanf() with %d and %f but I want to keep the scientific notation if I can.
Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your time,
Best,
John

Best Answer

Try this sscanf format string:
'%d%f'
However your file-importing code is rather complex. Here is a simpler method using textscan, which reads the two sections that you are apparently interested in:
myp = '.'; % path to where the file is saved.
fnm = fullfile(myp,'Quarter_Cone_10deg_CASE_No_FR.txt');
[fid,msg] = fopen(fnm,'rt');
assert(fid>=3,msg)
% 1. Read first matrix:
C = textscan(fid,'-1%f%f%f%f','HeaderLines',12,'CollectOutput',true);
% 2. Locate last NDTEMP line:
idx = NaN;
while ~feof(fid) % read every remaining line in the file...
	str = strtrim(fgets(fid));
	if strncmp(str,'-4  NDTEMP',10)
		idx = ftell(fid); % location of this line within the file.
	end
end
fseek(fid,idx,'bof'); % go back to the last NDTEMP line.
% 3. Read second matrix:
D = textscan(fid,'-1%f%f','HeaderLines',1,'CollectOutput',true);
fclose(fid);
And checking:
>> size(C{1})
ans =
       12881           4
>> C{1}
ans =
            1            0            0            0
            2     0.026303            0     0.062219
            3     0.039788     0.051913     0.051913
            4     0.026303     0.062219            0
            5       0.0127   2.2789e-15            0
            6      0.03574            0     0.055006
            7     0.047963     0.045664     0.045664
.... lots of lines here
        12883       1.4438      0.24538      0.20958
        12884       1.4438      0.24442      0.20875
        12885       1.4438      0.24345      0.20793
        12886       1.4438      0.24248       0.2071
        12887       1.4438      0.24152      0.20628
>> size(D{1})
ans =
    61     2
>> D{1}
ans =
            1       2116.5
            2       1975.5
           10       1702.6
           16       1445.4
           22       1288.9
 ... lots of lines here
          634       1162.1
          635       1156.7
          636       1151.8
          637       1147.5
          638       1144.4
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