Why can't I have parenthesis in my file name when using TEXTREAD?

Why can't I have parenthesis in my file name when using TEXTREAD?

If I use parenthesis in my file name, TEXTREAD gives an error. For example:

textread('C:\Test(1).csv', '','delimiter', ',', 'headerlines', 1)

will return the following:

 ??? Error: ";" expected, "." found.

 Error in ==> D:\MATLAB6p1\toolbox\matlab\iofun\textread.m

 On line 155  ==> if (exist(varargin{1}) ~= 2 | exist(fullfile(cd,varargin{1})) ~= 2) & ~isempty(which(varargin{1}))

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This seems to be a bug in the TEXTREAD function. It has been reported to our development staff to be fixed in a future release of MATLAB.

As a workaround you can create a wrapper function for TEXTREAD that will take in the directory where the file is located, the name of the file, and the parameters.

The wrapper function can look like the following:

function data = newtextread(dir, file, varargin)

% This function is a wrapper function for TEXTREAD function

% provided within MATLAB. This function takes care of

% the parenthesis in the file name, which causes TEXTREAD

% to fail.

      olddir = pwd;

      cd(dir);

      data = textread(file, varargin{:});

      cd(olddir);

Please copy and paste the above code in a file named newtextread.m and save it in a directory that is on your MATLAB path. This function can be used as followed:

newtextread('c:\', 'Test(1).csv', '','delimiter', ',', 'headerlines', 1)

where the file Test(1).csv is located at c:\.