MATLAB: Reading mixed format data from ‘.txt’ file in matlab

blockdata importMATLABtext;textscan

george
 23.91  29.70  19.08  48.00  23.33  10.25   2.28  3.36
 23.84  29.88  19.78  48.75  21.76   8.30   2.62   
  0.08  -0.18  -0.70  -0.75   1.57   1.94  -0.34  5.6  2.3  4.9  5.68
sams
 18.90  29.30  15.12  43.20  19.71   8.87   2.22
 18.76  31.28  15.15  50.18  16.15   5.96   2.71  21.76   8.30   2.62 
  0.14  -1.98  -0.03  -6.98   3.56   2.91  -0.49
peter
 22.71  78.30  18.27  82.90  21.28  36.08   0.59
 21.60  73.83  17.03  84.30  20.11  39.14   0.51
  1.10   4.47   1.24  -1.40   1.17  -3.07   0.08
jack
 18.56  40.70  14.85  45.30  19.13  11.34   1.69  78.30  18.27  82.90
 19.12  26.06  15.30  47.38  16.90   5.71   2.96
 -0.56  14.64  -0.45  -2.08   2.23   5.63  -1.27
This is a sample. I want to know how to read the data, when we have different lines and different formats of data.
Thank you for you time,
Ashok.

Best Answer

filename = 'sample.txt';
S = fileread(filename);
lines = cellfun(@strtrim, regexp(S,'\r?\n', 'split'), 'uniform', 0);
values = cellfun(@(s) cell2mat(textscan(s, '')),lines, 'uniform', 0);
mask = cellfun(@isempty,values);
values(mask) = lines(mask);
I did, however, take a shortcut here, and the above code will error if there are any lines that have text in a column after numbers; also any lines that have numbers in a column after text, the numbers will not be converted. If numbers and text need to be parsed on the same line, then the above will need to be improved on.
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