MATLAB: How to resolve CAT arguments dimensions, which are not consistent, when using cell2mat command

cell2matMATLABrepmat

I got a strange problem related to the reading in of space delimited text files. I’ve been attempting to read in several hundred blocks of data that look like this;
NFL58  23Mar2012  Show  2  1  01  0000000001  Low
001  25.187466  156.162447  21578.188  97.134234  stops  AAAAA  1  A10A
1.100000e-01  1.200000e-01  1.300000e-01  1.400000e-01  1.500000e-01  1.600000e-01  1.700000e-01  1.800000e-01  1.900000e-01
2.100000e-01  2.200000e-01  2.300000e-01  2.400000e-01  2.500000e-01  2.600000e-01  2.700000e-01  2.800000e-01  2.900000e-01
3.100000e-01  3.200000e-01  3.300000e-01  3.400000e-01  3.500000e-01  3.600000e-01  3.700000e-01  3.800000e-01  3.900000e-01
4.100000e-01  4.200000e-01  4.300000e-01  4.400000e-01  4.500000e-01  4.600000e-01  4.700000e-01  4.800000e-01  4.900000e-01
5.100000e-01  5.200000e-01  5.300000e-01  5.400000e-01  5.500000e-01  5.600000e-01  5.700000e-01  5.800000e-01  5.900000e-01
6.100000e-01  6.200000e-01  6.300000e-01  6.400000e-01  6.500000e-01  6.600000e-01  6.700000e-01  6.800000e-01  6.900000e-01
7.100000e-01  7.200000e-01  7.300000e-01  7.400000e-01  7.500000e-01  7.600000e-01  7.700000e-01  7.800000e-01  7.900000e-01
8.100000e-01  8.200000e-01  8.300000e-01  8.400000e-01  8.500000e-01  8.600000e-01  8.700000e-01  8.800000e-01  8.900000e-01
9.100000e-01  9.200000e-01  9.300000e-01  9.400000e-01  9.500000e-01  9.600000e-01  9.700000e-01  9.800000e-01  9.900000e-01
002  25.287466  156.162447  21578.288  97.234234  Done  BBBBB  2  A10B
1.120000e-01  1.200000e-01  1.300000e-01  1.400000e-01  1.500000e-01  1.600000e-01  1.700000e-01  1.800000e-01  1.900000e-01
2.120000e-01  2.200000e-01  2.300000e-01  2.400000e-01  2.500000e-01  2.600000e-01  2.700000e-01  2.800000e-01  2.900000e-01
3.120000e-01  3.200000e-01  3.300000e-01  3.400000e-01  3.500000e-01  3.600000e-01  3.700000e-01  3.800000e-01  3.900000e-01
4.120000e-01  4.200000e-01  4.300000e-01  4.400000e-01  4.500000e-01  4.600000e-01  4.700000e-01  4.800000e-01  4.900000e-01
5.120000e-01  5.200000e-01  5.300000e-01  5.400000e-01  5.500000e-01  5.600000e-01  5.700000e-01  5.800000e-01  5.900000e-01
6.120000e-01  6.200000e-01  6.300000e-01  6.400000e-01  6.500000e-01  6.600000e-01  6.700000e-01  6.800000e-01  6.900000e-01
7.120000e-01  7.200000e-01  7.300000e-01  7.400000e-01  7.500000e-01  7.600000e-01  7.700000e-01  7.800000e-01  7.900000e-01
8.120000e-01  8.200000e-01  8.300000e-01  8.400000e-01  8.500000e-01  8.600000e-01  8.700000e-01  8.800000e-01  8.900000e-01
9.120000e-01  9.200000e-01  9.300000e-01  9.400000e-01  9.500000e-01  9.600000e-01  9.700000e-01  9.800000e-01  9.900000e-01
My intent is to read all the data blocks (regardless of size) into cell arrays for future processing. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried reading in non-rectangular text files until now. I did some searching on the MATLAB WEB site for a sample of how this can be done. What I am trying to do is very similar to an example on the Mathworks site under examples for TEXTSCAN (Reading Arbitrary Format Text Files with TEXTSCAN). I ran the sample code with the test80211.txt file, and got the same results as the example. So I tried this approach with the data blocks shown above. But I keep getting the following error;
??? Error using ==> cat
CAT arguments dimensions are not consistent.
Error in ==> cell2mat at 81
            m{n} = cat(2,c{n,:});
Error in ==> TestScript2 at 44
      Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);
I began stepping through the code and noticed it ran good for the first data block, and the data variable had the 9×9 matrix I expected. However, I keep getting the above error on the 2nd block of data – at Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);
Here are the commands I’m utilizing (very similar to the example):
% Open text file
fid = fopen('BlockTypeTextTestFile.txt','r');
% Read Header Row (Row 1) as a string delimited by a carriage return
InputText=textscan(fid,'%s',1,'delimiter','\n');  
Headerline=InputText{1};
disp(Headerline);
% Initialize The Block Counter
Block = 1;
% Initialize the s variable
s = '';
% Lets read in each data block using TEXTSCAN for each line in the file. 
while ~feof(fid) 
      % Read row 2 delimited by a carriage return
      InputText=textscan(fid,'%f %f %f %f %f %5.0s %5.0s %f %5.0s',1,'delimiter','\n');  
      % Initialize the Number Of Columns Counter
      NumCols=InputText{1};
      % Create format string based on block number
      FormatString=repmat('%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f',1,NumCols);
      % Read 9 X 9 matrix data (all 9 lines) delimited by a carriage return
      InputText=textscan(fid,FormatString,9,'delimiter','\n');  
      % Convert to numerical array from cell
      Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);  
      %Size Of Table
      NumRows,NumCols]=size(Data{Block}); 
      % Increment the Block Counter
      Block = Block+1;
      % Ensure we're at the end of the file
      % where, isempty determines if next line is empty
      % and strvcat will concatenate strings vertically.
      % Close the figure after it appears as it is no longer needed.
      if isempty(line),break, end
      s = strvcat(s,line);
end
% Dispaly contents of s to the screen
disp(s)
%Close Text File
fclose(fid);
I’m stumped as to what could be causing the error. I've attempted to change the delimiter of the TEXTSCAN command to ' ' – no help.
The only thing I’ve noticed is that in the Workspace window, the FormatString value suddenly doubles from '%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f' to '%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f'
Any ideas as to what the source of the problem could be? Thank you. Brad.

Best Answer

I'm not sure why you are setting the format according to NumCols which is the first value you read in in the sub-block header line? Isn't that value just the block number, not an indicator of how many values per line you expect to get?
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