MATLAB: How to change a .txt file to a .mat file

txt

Hello, I have a .txt file that I want to convert into a .mat file.
I tried this code 
M = dlmread('test_background_id.txt'); %Use a better name that M
save('somefile.mat', 'M');
However I get an error 
% Error using dlmread (line 147)
% Mismatch between file and format character vector.
% Trouble reading 'Numeric' field from file (row number 1, field number 1) ==> Serial:
% 00002405\n
Anyone knows why this is the case?
Thanks

Best Answer

"Anyone knows why this is the case?"
dlmread only imports purely numeric data, which your file is not.
You will have to parse the file using some other tools, e.g. using fileread and a regular expression (you could probably coerce textscan and/or readtable to do much the same thing):
>> str = fileread('test_background_id.txt');
>> C = regexpi(str,'^([A-Z]+):\s*(.+?)\s*$','tokens','lineanchors');
>> C = vertcat(C{:})
    'Serial'                    '00002405'                                
    'Commit'                    'be6aa3b35e7caab3db1a87f95510bd40c86a7431'
    'CCamDeviceVersion'         '1.3.0-1920618'                           
    'SystemVersion'             '3.0.0'                                   
    'SystemBuildDate'           'Mon Oct 08 17:12:03 2018'                
    'SystemVersionControlID'    '7e8c3be8'                                
    'SystemId'                  '15'
which you can easily convert to a convenient structure:
>> S = cell2struct(C(:,2),C(:,1),1);
>> S.Serial
ans =
00002405
>> S.SystemVersion
ans =
3.0.0
After that it is trivial to save it as a .mat file:
>> save('somefile.mat','-struct','S')
TIP: always load into an output variable:
S = load(...)
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