MATLAB: How to load ASCII dat file to MATLAB

loadMATLABtextscan

After reading some articles in the forum, I used textscan to load my .dat file to MATLAB. Unfortunately, MATLAB only read the first line of my .dat file.

load does not work, most likely because 7th column is double followed by "….."

fid=fopen('newtext.dat');
C=textscan(fid,'%d %d %d %d %d %d %d');

this led to

C=
[775841]    [644]    [552]    [1185]    [617]    [534]    [1153]

Any hints or answers to this problem would be appreciated!

Here's a sample of my .dat file:

775841      643.5      551.6     1185.0      617.3      533.6     1153.0  .....
775843      643.6      552.3     1185.0      621.0      531.8     1153.0  .....
775845      643.6      552.9     1185.0      624.7      530.1     1152.0  .....
775847      643.4      553.4     1185.0      625.6      529.7     1153.0  .....
775849      643.1      553.4     1186.0      622.8      530.7     1154.0  .....
775851      642.8      553.5     1187.0      620.0      531.7     1154.0  .....
775853      642.9      554.0     1187.0      616.6      534.4     1154.0  .....
775855      643.1      554.8     1186.0      613.3      537.3     1154.0  .....
775857      643.5      555.5     1185.0      614.4      538.2     1154.0  .....
775859      643.7      555.5     1184.0      618.7      536.3     1155.0  .....

Best Answer

fid=fopen('newtext.dat');
fmt=[repmat('%f',1,7) '.....'];  % include the junk as pattern matching
C=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',true));

should give a single array of all the values.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Hi. How can i open a file .dat in matlab to make graphs

fid = fopen('YourFile.dat', 'r');

That opens the .dat file. Reading the data in it is a different question. There is no fixed format for .dat files: .dat files are any format convenient to the program that generated them. You need to know how your .dat file was generated in order to have a hope of extracting data from it.

MATLAB: Hello! I need to extract the lines which start with PG10 from this text file. Could you please help me. Thanks! I would use while loop but I am not sure how.

fmt=['PG10 ' repmat('%f ',1,8)];
fid=fopen('sp3data.txt');
PG10=[];
while ~feof(fid)
  PG10=[PG10; cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',1))];
end
fid=fclose(fid);

is the "quick-n-dirty" solution. It simply concatenates the next set of values onto the preceding with dynamic reallocation. Presuming there aren't a zillion PG10 records in the file, this will be quick-enough.

If there are so many that performance is slow, preallocate the array as

PG10=zeros(AVERYBIGNUMBER,8);

and populate it by keeping a counter

i=0;  % initialize counter
while ~feof(fid)
  i=i+1;   % increment
  PG10(i,:)=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',1));
end
fid=fclose(fid);

ADDENDUM

Per the note in comments, the above won't work as is...

fmt=['PG10 ' repmat('%f ',1,8)];
fid=fopen('sp3data.txt');
PG10=[];
while ~feof(fid)
  l=fgetl(fid);        % read a record
  if strfind(l,'PG10')
    PG10=[PG10; cell2mat(textscan(l,fmt,'collectoutput',1))];
  end
end
fid=fclose(fid);

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Hi. How can i open a file .dat in matlab to make graphs

MATLAB: Hello! I need to extract the lines which start with PG10 from this text file. Could you please help me. Thanks! I would use while loop but I am not sure how.

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