MATLAB: How tomport/parse sparse data from a text file into MATLAB

data importMATLABtext file

I've been having issues with parsing data into MATLAB from a text file. The textfile has discontinuities between its strings (it has spaces), and it seems like everytime I tried to import the data into matlab it just combines everything and messes up the data. I would like to basically read the text file (attached) and import the corresponging strings with their values into an array (probably).
I also tried to import the file into Excel and see if I could delimiter my data in a nicer format so I can easily import it into MATLAB but excel also does not like the data format and it breaks every word into a column which messes up everything as well.
Any help would be greatly appreciate it.
Here is what I did so far:
%% Setup the Import Options and import the data
opts = delimitedTextImportOptions("NumVariables", 3);
% Specify range and delimiter
opts.DataLines = [2, Inf];
opts.Delimiter = ",";
% Specify column names and types
opts.VariableNames = ["TITLE", "BEGININPUTDATAECHO", "VarName3"];
opts.VariableTypes = ["string", "string", "string"];
% Specify file level properties
opts.ExtraColumnsRule = "ignore";
opts.EmptyLineRule = "read";
% Specify variable properties
opts = setvaropts(opts, ["TITLE", "BEGININPUTDATAECHO", "VarName3"], "WhitespaceRule", "preserve");
opts = setvaropts(opts, ["TITLE", "BEGININPUTDATAECHO", "VarName3"], "EmptyFieldRule", "auto");
% Import the data
ATR42500zjf2 = readtable("test.txt", opts);
%% Clear temporary variables
clear opts

Best Answer

After some testing, it seems your file can be read by setting delimiter to 3x spaces.
You can combine this with the rest of your options here as needed.
opts = detectImportOptions('test.txt','Delimiter','   ','ConsecutiveDelimitersRule','join','ExpectedNumVariables',3,'LeadingDelimitersRule','ignore');
opts = setvartype(opts,'VALUEDIMENSIONS','char');
a = readtable('test.txt',opts);
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