MATLAB: Importing data from a txt file that is laid out in matrix form

Question

I have a text file which has data laid out in the following format:

a11 a12 a13 a14 a15 a16

a21 a22 a23 a24 a25 a26

a31 a32 a33

a41 a42 a43 a44 a45 a46

a51 a52 a53 a54

I would like to import this data and preserve the formatting. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Set the path to your text file and the number of columns in your text file. This will preserve the format of your data and store all elements in a cell array. Missing values in your text file will be missing values in the cell array.

Note that this will not work if there is a missing value in the first row.

filename = 'C:\Users\boykoborisov\Documents\MATLAB\mydata.txt';   %your text file
nCols = 6;                                          %number of columns in your data
fid = fopen(filename);                              % open the text file
C = textscan(fid, repmat('%s ', 1, nCols));         % read text file
fclose(fid);                                        % close text file
nRows = cellfun(@length, C);                        % number of rows for each column
data = cell(max(nRows), nCols);                        % define new cell array that will store your data
for i = 1:nCols
    data(1:nRows(i),i) = C{i};                      
end

data =
  5×6 cell array
    {'a11'}    {'a12'}    {'a13'}    {'a14'   }    {'a15'     }    {'a16'     }
    {'a21'}    {'a22'}    {'a23'}    {'a24'   }    {'a25'     }    {'a26'     }
    {'a31'}    {'a32'}    {'a33'}    {0×0 char}    {0×0 char  }    {0×0 char  }
    {'a41'}    {'a42'}    {'a43'}    {'a44'   }    {'a45'     }    {'a46'     }
    {'a51'}    {'a52'}    {'a53'}    {'a54'   }    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}