MATLAB: How to use a two character string as a delimiter in “textscan” function

Question

I want to use " 'h " as a single delimiter to extract the letters after " 'h " with "textscan" function. I can use " h " as a delimiter, but I cannot use " 'h " as a single delimiter.

Answer 1

For large files with specific delimiter:

You can achieve this using "MultipleDelimsAsOne" property in 'textscan'.

For example, 

C = textscan(fileID,'%s %s','Delimiter',{'''','h'},'MultipleDelimsAsOne',1,'TreatAsEmpty',{'NA','na'},'CommentStyle','//');

Please refer documentation page for more details:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020b/matlab/ref/textscan.html?searchHighlight=textscan&s_tid=doc_srchtitle#btghhyz-1_sep_shared-MultipleDelimsAsOne

For Smaller text files:

You can use of "regexp" instead since there might be an issue with order of delimiter.

 file = fileread(filename);
 pieces = regexp(file, "'h", 'split');
 
if  isempty(pieces{end})
      pieces(end) = []; 
 end  %special condition for EOF