MATLAB: Reading a text file and rows with data

read text filerows with data

Hi,
I need to read the text file shown in the image below using a MATLAB script.I have tried the code below and I appreciate if someone can guide me to make it working. I have attached the text file here.
Thanks in advance.
myFolder = 'C:\Users\Desktop\'
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.txt');
csvFiles = dir(filePattern);
fmt='%d %4d/%2d/%2d %2d:%2d %d %*[^\n]';
for i=1:length(csvFiles)
  fid = fopen(fullfile(myFolder,csvFiles(i).name));
  c=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'headerlines',18,'collectoutput',1,'delimiter','\t'));
  fid=fclose(fid);
end

Best Answer

Well, since the file was malformed after all, here's how to clean it up and create a version which can then be read...
c=char(textread('023002_Q_1997.txt','%s','delimiter','\n','whitespace','','headerlines',18));
ix=[7 20:3:32 42];
c(:,ix)=',';
d=cell2mat(textscan(c(:,1:42).',repmat('%f',1,7),'collectoutput',1,'delimiter',','));
>> whos d
Name         Size             Bytes  Class     Attributes
d         8832x7             494592  double              
>> d(1:10,:)
ans =
 1.0e+04 *
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001         0         0    0.0000
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001         0    0.0015       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001         0    0.0030       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001         0    0.0045       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0001         0       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0001    0.0015       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0001    0.0030       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0001    0.0045       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0002         0       NaN
  2.3002    0.1997    0.0010    0.0001    0.0002    0.0015       NaN
>>
NB: Trotted out the old standby textread to read the file originally as a cellstring array as it does it without the need for the extra fopen/fclose pair and has all the flexibility needed for the purposes here.
The "magic numbers" were found by looking at the file in an editor and noting the columns following each numeric field, including the '/' and ':' for the date/time fields. These could have been done with string substitution or left as date/time fields but I just went ahead and turned the whole file into a csv file for simplicity.
Following that, saved the character array through the terminating comma after the last (possibly missing) numeric field and passed that to textscan. The key "trick" here is to remember storage is colum-major in Matlab so must transpose the array in memory to work by row from memory instead of down each column.
Also, there's a problem with the file format that the cast to char takes care of--on those records missing the final character the record length is short by a character and those that have a two-character trailing string are long by a character over the predominant length. This means don't actually have a fixed-length record file altho the first columns are fixed-width; another government contractor "feature", no doubt. :) This means can't just read the file as bytes and reshape but must scan for record terminators and then fixup.
Anyway, this should be something that works for all files.
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