MATLAB: Trouble reading in formatted text file

determinetext filetextscan

Hi, I am trying to read in a formatted text file of unknown size. An example of the data I want to read in is shown below:
*lines 1-3: blank
*lines 4-6: useless text
*line 7: string string string double  %(this line should be read into Settings) 
*line 8: useless text
*lines 9-12: string double double string %(this line should be read into AlarmData)
*lines 13-16: blank
*line 17: string string %(this line should be read into Time)
This pattern then repeats throughout the entire file. My first thought was to determine the number of lines in the file so I used this code:
 FileID= fopen(filename);
%Code to find number of lines in the file
assert(FileID~= -1, 'Could not read: %s', filename);
x= onCleanup(@() fclose(FileID));
count=0;
while ~feof(FileID)
    count= count+sum(fread( FileID, 16384, 'char')==char(10));
end
fclose(FileID)
%code to determine number of data runs
num_data_runs=count/17;
I then try to loop through the file with textscan commands to read in the data to appropriate cells
    FileID= fopen(filename);
    iter=1;
      while(iter<=num_data_runs)
          Settings(iter,1:4)= textscan(FileID, '%s%s%s%f',1, 'headerLines', 6);
          AlarmData(iter,1:4)= textscan(FileID, '%s %f %f %s',4, 'headerLines', 2);
          Time(iter,1:2)= textscan(FileID, '%s%s', 1, 'headerLines', 4);
          iter=iter+1;
      end
      fclose(FileID)
The result of this code is a 3×4 cell of AlarmData, a 3×4 cell of Settings, and a 3×2 cell of Time. The first row in all of these cells is what I intended them to be, but the other rows are all containing the wrong data from the file. Any thoughts?
Thanks

Best Answer

Consider you have text file with name 'Data.txt'.. then
Following command will give you all data present in text file.
Data = textread('Data.txt', '%s', 'delimiter', '')
and then..
 NumberOfRows = length(Data);
to read the data row wise..
 for count = 1:NumberOfRows
     RowData = Data{count};
     % add logic to perform any action on RowData.
 end
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