MATLAB: Reading columns of a .DAT file

.dat filetext filetext readingtext;textscan

Hi All, I'm new to MATLAB and for my data processing, I need to read my data (format=float)from a .DAT file. This file contains 17 columns with close to 4000 rows (based on my experimental condition the # of rows can change), but always the two first rows are text formats (parameter name and then its units). Now I need to know how can I extract data with headers column-wise? I want to read each column and then write each of them into an EXCEL file.
Thanks
P.S: I found exactly the same question here , but no useful answers were provided
I have attached an example file

Best Answer

fid = fopen(v1_Out-a.dat', 'rt');
firstline = fgetl(fid);
varnames = regexp(firstline, '\t', 'split');
nvars = length(varnames);
units = regexp(fgetl(fid), '\t', 'split');
fmt = repmat('%f', 1, nvars);
data = textscan(fid, fmt, 'collectdata', 1);
fclose(fid);
datatable = array2table(data, 'VariableNames', varnames, 'VariableUnits', units);
writetable(datatable, 'NameOfExcelFile.xls')
This might possibly lose the information about units.
Note that for the purposes of excel, you could just convert all the tab characters to commas and call that a .csv file.
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