EZread

Easily read csv files containing both text and numeric columns

Description

Read a CSV file that contains both text and numeric columns, without having to manually specify the column type using %f, %s, etc.

MATLAB functions such as "textscan" that can read files with columns of both text and numeric values require the user to specify the data type of each column, which can be tedious for anything but the simplest file. Instead, this function determines each column's data type automatically.

Creates a MATLAB structure from the data, with fieldnames matching the headers in the file.

See also: "ezwrite"

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.2 (R2006a)

[Sean Wilson]

Amazing! I was going to suggest that Mathworks hire the author, but it looks like they already did.

[JON AM]

GOOD PROGRAM

[Ken Campbell]

Extremely useful, but the current version doesn't close the file after opening it. This snippet crashes on my machine at about i=500

i=1;
while (i<1000)
    i=i+1
    a=ezread('c:\temp\test.txt','\t');
end

Adding fclose(fid) to the end of the file solves the problem.

[Ken Campbell]

Paul contacted me shortly after my comment and has now updated the code. I'll rate it 5.

[Aravind Ratnam]

Could someone please post the 'fixed' version?

[kevin brown]

Does not take into consideration whether a text field (within quotations) has a comma in it (i.e. ...,"new york, ny",...

[Ilse Van Tricht]

This is right what I needed to read in a CSV file! Nice tool!!!

[Jacob Bemrich]

Exactly what I was looking for.

[Mike Smith]

doesn't work even on the simplest of .cvs files

??? Error using ==> textscan
First input must be of type double.

Error in ==> ezread at 41
header_cell = textscan(header_str,'%q','delimiter',file_delim);

Error in ==> stringParsing at 5
out_struct = ezread('TEST.csv',',')

[Laura McCormack]

Very nice! This is just what I needed.

[Joe leitten]

I have a csv file, but it is only reading in the headers and the next row. nothing else is being read in?

[Justin Elstrott]

Works great on my mac for importing .csv files with mixed numeric and text columns from Excel! Glad I stumbled across this gem.

[Cheol Hee]

Fantastic!!!!
Works great, read quickly than csvread!!!!!