5.0 | 8 ratings Rate this file 116 downloads (last 30 days) File Size: 9.59 KB File ID: #20609

Read DBF files

08 Jul 2008 (Updated 17 Feb 2009)

No BSD License

DBFREAD reads numeric, float, character and date data and field names from a .DBF file.

File Information
Description	DBFREAD is a data import function supporting DBF files. DBF files are often used as one-shot data files rather than the more traditional role of a database to store and retrieve compiled data. This work is based on functionality initially developed for the Mapping Toolbox by Rob Comer.
MATLAB release	MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)

Tags for This File
Everyone's Tags	data, data export, data import, database, dbase, dbf, export, import, utilities
Tags I've Applied
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Comments and Ratings (8)
31 Jul 2008	Clayton Hiles	Converts a .dbf to a cell array. Exactly what I needed!
07 Aug 2008	Omer O	Allowed me to join multiple files with a simple script, which I was not able to do in other programs. This is a great program!! KUDOS Brian!!
30 Aug 2008	C Schwalm	Excellent! A simple interface with DBF data that should be part of standard Matlab. One suggestion: Change [name '.dbf'] to [pathstr filesep name '.dbf'] Otherwise it's hard to point to files...
17 Sep 2008	Dav Jones	Very good
05 Nov 2008	Anthony Kendall	Works very well!
30 Jan 2009	Chaopeng	Hi Brian, I tried to use your dbfread to read a file. There were 98 columns in the file but after your script returned 120 columns. I checked it and found that some of the numeric fields have been duplicated. I don't know why. Anyways. Thanks for sharing!
30 Jan 2009	Chaopeng	Hi brian I found out why. It was because when exporting a file from xls to dbf, some fields get assigned the same field name due to truncation. I guess I should have given your 5 stars but whoops can't change that right now..
29 May 2009	Ola Olsson	Great. This seems to save us a lot of work! One comment, though: It appears that the function requires a dBase IV format dbf-file. Some software (e.g. MS FoxPro) do not use that format (but still .dbf) as standard but can easily export to it.

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Updates
17 Sep 2008	Fixed a bug that appeared when numeric fields have space-padded zeroes, and included the path string in the file open command to make it possible to point to files not on the MATLAB path.
17 Feb 2009	Modified a data assignment call to support the R13 6.5.2 release of MATLAB. Thanks to Dr. Patrick Haas of the Institute of Meteorology, BOKU - Vienna for his suggestion.
17 Feb 2009	Modified an assignment call to support the R14 6.5.2 release of MATLAB. Thanks to Dr. Patrick Haas of the Institute of Meteorology at BOKU - Vienna for the suggestion.

Tag Activity for this File
Tag	Applied By	Date/Time
data import	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
data export	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
dbase	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
database	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
dbf	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
utilities	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
data	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
import	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22
export	Brian Madsen	22 Oct 2008 10:09:22

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