MATLAB: Search in large cell file

Question

Hi all,

I'm looking for a function such that I can acces the following text in my SSD file (attached)

THE FOLLOWING TABLE IS PRINTED FOR NODES BELONGING TO NODE SET ASSEMBLY_DISPLACEMENT_NODE,

I open my SSD file according to:

clear all, clc, format longG
Counter = 1;
FID = fopen('SSD_anal - Copy.dat', 'rt'); 
tline = fgetl(FID);
File_Data{Counter} = tline;
while ischar(tline)
    Counter = Counter+1;
    tline = fgetl(FID);
    File_Data{Counter} = tline;
end
fclose(FID);
File_Data = File_Data';

Which brings me a cell 76540×1 cell, I tried to find the indices by:

Index = find(contains(File_Data,'THE FOLLOWING TABLE IS PRINTED FOR NODES BELONGING TO NODE SET ASSEMBLY_DISPLACEMENT_NODE'));

and

IndexC = strfind(File_Data,'THE FOLLOWING TABLE IS PRINTED FOR NODES BELONGING TO NODE SET ASSEMBLY_DISPLACEMENT_NODE');

but nothing works, as it states that:

Error using strfind
Cell must be a cell array of character vectors.

Any clues how I could find the indices where the file states the statement above?

greetings and thanks for your help and attention already!

Answer 1

In the loop all lines are stored in the cell an the loops stops, if the last one was not a CHAR. This means, that the last element of the cell is not a CHAR, exactly as the error message tells you.

Either remove the last element:

File_Data(end) = [];

or use a more compact method to import the text:

S         = fileread('SSD_anal - Copy.dat');
File_Data = strsplit(S, char(10));