MATLAB: How to read a text file and import a part of it into matlab.

importing a m x n matrix from a text filereading txt file

I have a text file with 13 columns and some 900 rows. But,column 9 to 12 are asterisk and 13th is again numeric.I want to import only the numerics from 1st row to 38th row and 1st column to 8th column.Please help.

Best Answer

fmt=[repmat('%f',1,8) %*[^\n]'];  % 8 values, skip rest of line format string
fid=fopen('yourfilenamehere');    % open the file; return file handle
data=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,38,'collectoutput',1)); % read; repeat format 38 times
fid=fclose(fid);                  % close file
% do whatever w/ data here...
NB: I went ahead and wrapped the textscan call in cell2mat to return a double array. I assumed delimiter one of the default; if something else you'll need to fixup to match.
See
doc textscan % for details, examples, etc., ...
Or, option B:
Use the data import tool from the User Interface that (I think) will let you select an area to import from the file...not sure how it will do with such a long file but presume it'll handle it.
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