MATLAB: Using sscanf and NaN

Question

Greetings,

So if i have the following:

a = '21414839.260   112535757.19909      2294.184    21414838.320    87690207.10148 1787.672'

Using:

 A=sscanf(a,'%f')

Will return:

A =
     1.0e+08 *
      0.2141
      1.1254
      0.0000
      0.2141
      0.8769
      0.0000

But if If the last 3 numbers are missing from the line :

a = '21414839.260   112535757.19909      2294.184                                        '

I want this to be returned:

 A =
     1.0e+08 *
      0.2141
      1.1254
      0.0000
      NaN
      NaN
      NaN

How can I make this possible?

Answer 1

If you know that sscanf of the input string is to return 6 numbers, and A is only populated with three, then you could do the following

 A = [A; repmat(NaN,6-length(A),1)];