MATLAB: How to read a file like a table

readtable

Hello,
I'm looking to read double precision data from a file, in however many columns it is, and to the end of file. The result should be a N x M double.
i.e. if I paste this in the Matlab window, I get what I need:
table=[
1016.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1016.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 -479.528 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 468.718 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 -385.346 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 696.118 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 -7591 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 7591 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 -7573.16 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 7573.16 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 -2620.704 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 4134 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 1022.074 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7701.638
];
That gives a 16x8 double.
But in the file would be just the values, as shown.
Some form of fscan maybe, but with generalized format?
Thanks for unconfusing me…
Dave

Best Answer

Use textscan without an explicit format string--that's a magic incantation that will return the data in the same shape as is in the file for regular files of all numeric data.
data=cell2mat(textscan(fid,'','collectoutput',1));
Add any additional parameters needed for delimiter, missing value, headerlines, etc., etc., ...
Or, dlmread will also return the proper shape for those files which it can handle (which generally includes those for which the above textscan "trick" will work.
Since R2013b there's readtable which will leave you with a table dataset rather than an array so whether that is/is not an advantage depends on what you're going to be doing with the data.
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