Index Exceeds matrix dimensions Error? Not your typical cause.

I have a feeling it has to do with the source code because the URL reading is working. But the expression I am looking for is broken down by new lines, which is where the problem seems to be coming from. I've tried adding "/n" to the line breaks but it does not work. Any idea what's going on here?

The error is on the last line of code. temp = ....

    URL = 'http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AAC+Balance+Sheet&annual'; 
    options = weboptions('Timeout',Inf);
    str = webread(URL,options);

    [assetsmatch, assetsnomatch] = regexp(str,'<strong>Total Assets</strong></td><td align="right"><strong>([0-9.]*)  </strong>','tokens','match');

    temp = str2double(assetsmatch{1,1});

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

No, it is the usual reason: you assumed that data was present without checking it first.

According to my browser, there is a lot of white space that you are missing in your regular expression. Newlines. Spaces.

I do not have a version of MATLAB new enough to have webread(). If I use urlread() then the <strong> is not there, and instead there are <span with style: entries nearby, with the implication being that the entire presentation is being controlled by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and those are causing the <strong> .

Also, your subexpression for the numbers is using [0-9.] but the numbers being presented (at least when I look) have no '.' and instead contain ',' such as 145,952 . Perhaps it shows up as '.' when you view it. The magic of CSS.

I suggest simply matching against 'Total Assets[^0-9]+([0-9.,]+)'