MATLAB: Reading strings from text file to a MATLAB cell array

file i/oMATLABtext file

I have a text file with data that looks like this:

Ta Example Name1
Tn Example Name2
Th Example Name3
Td Example Name4
Tg Example Name5

The 'Ta', 'Tn', etc. will always be the same length of 2 characters but 'Example Name1' and 'Example Name2' will not. I'd like to read this information into a cell array or other array in MATLAB so that the first column contains the identifier (Ta, Tn, Th, etc.) and the second column contains the name.

I've tried several approaches using a CSV file but it was difficult to append the file with a cell array of strings (not supported with xlswrite, dlmwrite, etc.).

Best Answer

Try textscan,

fid = fopen('file.txt');
data = textscan(fid,'%s%s%s');
fclose(fid);

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MATLAB: Summing numerical data of excel files in Matlab

Assuming file names to be coded as follows: data_001.xlsx, data_002.xlsx, .., data_100.xlsx, you could build a solution based on the following approach

 nFiles = 100 ;
 for fId = 1 : nFiles
    filename = sprintf( 'data_%03d.xlsx', fId ) ;
    num = xlsread( filename ) ;
    if fId == 1
       buffer = num ;                   % See note 1.

    else
       buffer = buffer + num ;          % See note 1.
    end
 end

Note 1: this assumes that there is only one column of numeric values in the file. If there are multiple, you have to select the relevant column, e.g. if it's column 3: buffer=num(:,3) and buffer=buffer+num(:,3).

This approach can be extended a little with code for e.g. taking all files from a specific folder, or matching names if they can be stored in various orders.

MATLAB: Reading .txt file of values separated by semicolon

 C = textscan(fileName, '%s','Delimiter',';')

Best Answer

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MATLAB: Reading .txt file of values separated by semicolon

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