MATLAB: Writetable, user defined name

user defined file namewritetable

I have a code that generates a txt file by using the function writetable (shown below). In my code, I name the file 'final.txt'. However, I would like the user to be prompted to enter the name of the file while the code is running so that the file can be saved according to the users entered file name.

writetable(Results_Table,'final.txt','Delimiter','\t')

Best Answer

Use this code:

% Get the name of the file that the user wants to save.
startingFolder = userpath % Or "pwd" or 'C:\my results' or wherever you want.
defaultFileName = fullfile(startingFolder, '*.txt');
[baseFileName, folder] = uiputfile(defaultFileName, 'Specify a file');
if baseFileName == 0
	% User clicked the Cancel button.
	return;
end
fullFileName = fullfile(folder, baseFileName)
writetable(Results_Table, fullFileName, 'Delimiter', '\t')

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is there a way to return the status of writetable, writematrix, or writecell

"Is there a way to return the status of writetable, writematrix, or writecell?"

No. But there are workarounds depending on how you'd like to check the status. xlswrite writes the file within a try/catch block and returns false if the try-part throws an error. You could do the same using,

status = true; 
try
    writetable(___)
catch ME
    status = false;
end

You could check if the newly writen file exists using

writetable(T,filename); % where filename is the full path
if exist(filename,'file')==2
    status = true;
else
    status = false;
end

If you are concerned about specific values being written to the file, you could read in the newly written file and compare the read-in values with the values that were written to the file. However, be aware of precision limits; the numer pi for example won't be written to infinite decimals.

writetable(T,filename)
Tcheck = readtable(filename);
if max(T.Var1 - Tcheck.Var1)<1e-06
    status = true;
else
    status = false;
end

I don't find any of these to be useful, though. What good is it if the file wasn't written correctly? Instead, I would assign a constant value true to the status variable and would use assert() to throw an error if any of these tests failed.

assert(exist(filename,'file')==2, 'File missing.')
Tcheck = readtable(filename);
assert(max(T.Var1 - Tcheck.Var1)<1e-06, 'Values in file do not match original data.')

" the old code uses xlswrite, which is according to MATLAB, outdated, and that makes sense why it's not working"

As far as I know, current releases of Matlab should be backward compatible with xlswrite, although it's still a good idea to update those functions.

MATLAB: How to write data into .txt file

% Ask for the name of the file that the user wants to save.
startingFolder = pwd % or wherever you want.
defaultFileName = fullfile(startingFolder, '*.*');
[baseFileName, folder] = uiputfile(defaultFileName, 'Specify a file');
if baseFileName == 0
	% User clicked the Cancel button.
	return;
end
fullFileName = fullfile(folder, baseFileName)
% Open file for writing.
fid = fopen(fullFileName, 'wt');
if fid ~= -1
    % Was able to open it successfully, now write stuff into it.
    fprintf(fid, 'Average = %f.\nStandard Deviation = %f.\n', Avg, Standard_deviation);
    fclose(fid);  
else
    errorMessage = sprintf('Error opening %s for output.', fullFileName);
    uiwait(errordlg(errorMessage));
end

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is there a way to return the status of writetable, writematrix, or writecell

MATLAB: How to write data into .txt file

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