MATLAB: Reading specific lines in the text file.

fgetsfilereadmatchregexpregular expressionstring

I need to read "# / TYPES OF OBSERV" lines and extract the lines' data except "# / TYPES OF OBSERV". For example in the data.txt file (attached file), related lines are;
10 L1 A2 L5 C1 C2 P2 C5 S1 L2# / TYPES OF OBSERV
S5 # / TYPES OF OBSERV
I need to read these two lines and create below cellarray
data_cell={'10' 'L1' 'A2' 'L5' 'C1' 'C2' 'P2' 'C5' 'S1' 'L2' 'S5'}

Best Answer

There are multiple ways that this could be achieved, for example regular expressions and regexp:
>> ptn = '# / TYPES OF OBSERV';
>> str = fileread('data.txt');
>> out = regexp(str, ['^[^\n]+(?=',ptn,'\s*$)'], 'match', 'lineanchors');
>> out = regexp([out{:}], '(?<=\s+)\S+', 'match')
out = '10' 'L1' 'A2' 'L5' 'C1' 'C2' 'P2' 'C5' 'S1' 'L2' 'S5'
where the first regexp call locates the required lines of text, and the second call extracts each individual group of characters.