Trouble with fprintf,fopen and fscanf

Hello, I see there are quite a few questions for 'fprintf'. I went through a lot of them but could not resolve my issue by myself. I need help for working this out. I have a set of names. I want to write down these names in a .txt file. If the names are repeating in the set, I want to write them only once to my .txt file.

Presently, the names are being written in a single line to my .txt file. I want them one below the other. (I am using \n\r for my Windows machine).

This writing process occurs multiple times in my actual code. So I want to create the text file only the first time my for loop runs. The code looks as follows:

    people = {'demi','britney','demi','michael'};

    %If file does not exist, create a file
    if exist('singer.txt') == 0;
            fid = fopen('singer.txt','wt');
            fclose(fid);
    end

    for i = 1:length(people)
        %Open the created file and read its contents into variable 'content'
            fid = fopen('singer.txt','r');
            content = fscanf(fid,'%s');
            fclose(fid);

            if isempty(strmatch(people{i},content)) == 1 %if 'content' already has a name in it that matches with current name(people{i}), do nothing
                %convert people name from cell to char - because fprintf works
                %only with characters
                people_char = char(people{i});
                people_use = people_char(1,:);
                fid = fopen('singer.txt','a');
                fprintf(fid,'%s\n\r',people_use);%write to new lines everytime
                fclose(fid);
            end

    end

Please let me know how to make this work.

Thank you very much.

Ranjit

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

If I recall correctly, MS Windows uses \r\n rather than \n\r . But you can avoid that whole question by use 'rt' when you read, and 'at' when you append, and use only \n to indicate newline; the \n will automatically be translated into the appropriate two-character sequence for MS Windows.

[ranjit]

Thanks a lot. It was driving me nuts to figure out this one!