Thread Subject: reading file with variable number of columns

Hi,
I have a file with the following format

john 0.1 0.05 ...
jill 0.25 ...
...

essentially, first column of every row is a string and then after that
there are
variable numbers between 0 to 1 such that the number of columns are
different.
All I want to do is read line by line and then simply plot the
values.
how do I do this?

many thanks
lee

Lee Sander:
<SNIP formatted text input evergreen...

one of the solutions is outlined below
note: <nan>s are used to indicate rows without any numbers

% the contents of file <foo.txt> according to your spec
% note: various number representations and an anomaly
a 1 2
bb 1.1 2.2 3.3
ccc 10.01
d4
e_5 100.11e-1
f .1e2 .2e3 0.3e4

% the engine
     fnam='foo.txt'; % <- use your file name
     rexname='^[^\s]+';
     rexdata='(?<=\s).+';
     s=textread(fnam,'%s','delimiter','\n');
     t=regexp(s,rexname,'match');
     t=[t{:}].';
     n=regexp(s,rexdata,'match');
     n(cellfun(@isempty,n))={'nan'};
     n=[n{:}].';
     nd=cellfun(@(x) sscanf(x,'%f').',n,'uni',false);
% the result
     type(fnam);
     [t,n]
     nd{:}

us