fileread

Read contents of file as text

Syntax

text = fileread(filename)

text = fileread(filename,Encoding=encoding)

Description

text = fileread(filename) returns contents of the file filename as a character vector.

text = fileread(filename,Encoding=encoding) opens filename using the encoding specified by encoding.

Examples

Search File for Text

Read a file and search it for text of interest.

First, read the file fileread.m into a character vector.

filetext = fileread('fileread.m');

Then, define the text to search for.

expr = '[^\n]*fileread[^\n]*';

Find and return all lines that contain the text 'fileread'.

matches = regexp(filetext,expr,'match');

Display the first matching line.

disp(matches{1})

function out = fileread(filename,args)

Input Arguments

filename — Name of file to read

character vector or string scalar

Name of file to read, specified as a character vector or string scalar that includes the file extension. fileread leverages automatic character set detection to determine the file encoding.

On UNIX^® systems, if filename begins with '~/' or '~username/', the fileread function expands the path to the current or specified user's home directory, respectively.

Depending on the location of your file, filename can take on one of these forms.

Current folder or folder on the MATLAB® path	Specify the name of the file in filename. If you open a file with read access and the file is not in the current folder, then fileread searches along the MATLAB search path. Example: 'sample_file.txt'
Other folders	If the file is not in the current folder or in a folder on the MATLAB path, then specify the full or relative path name in filename. Example: 'C:\myFolder\myFile.sample_file.txt' Example: 'myFolder\sample_file.txt'
Remote Location	If the file is stored at a remote location, then filename must contain the full path of the file specified as a uniform resource locator (URL) of the form: scheme_name://path_to_file/my_file.ext Based on your remote location, scheme_name can be one of the values in this table. Remote Location scheme_name Amazon S3™ s3 Windows Azure® Blob Storage wasb, wasbs HDFS™ hdfs If you are using a cloud file system, set environment variables to communicate with the remote file system. For more information, see Work with Remote Data. Example: 's3://bucketname/path_to_file/sample_file.txt'

Example: 'myFile.dat'

Data Types: char | string

encoding — Character encoding scheme

"" | "UTF-8" | "ISO-8859-1" | "windows-1251" | "windows-1252" | ...

Character encoding scheme associated with the file, specified as "" or a standard character encoding scheme name like one of the values in this table. When you do not specify any encoding or specify encoding as "", the fileread function uses the default MATLAB encoding to read the file.

"Big5"	"ISO-8859-1"	"windows-874"
"Big5-HKSCS"	"ISO-8859-2"	"windows-949"
"CP949"	"ISO-8859-3"	"windows-1250"
"EUC-KR"	"ISO-8859-4"	"windows-1251"
"EUC-JP"	"ISO-8859-5"	"windows-1252"
"EUC-TW"	"ISO-8859-6"	"windows-1253"
"GB18030"	"ISO-8859-7"	"windows-1254"
"GB2312"	"ISO-8859-8"	"windows-1255"
"GBK"	"ISO-8859-9"	"windows-1256"
"IBM866"	"ISO-8859-11"	"windows-1257"
"KOI8-R"	"ISO-8859-13"	"windows-1258"
"KOI8-U"	"ISO-8859-15"	"US-ASCII"
	"Macintosh"	"UTF-8"
	"Shift_JIS"

Example: Encoding="system" uses the system default encoding.

Extended Capabilities

C/C++ Code Generation

Generate C and C++ code using MATLAB® Coder™.

Usage notes and limitations:

• If the function fileread reads the entire file, then all the data must fit in the largest array that is available for code generation.

• The code generator for the fileread function treats the char value for source or output as a signed 8-bit integer. Use values between 0 and 127 only.

Thread-Based Environment

Run code in the background using MATLAB® backgroundPool or accelerate code with Parallel Computing Toolbox™ ThreadPool.

This function fully supports thread-based environments. For more information, see Run MATLAB Functions in Thread-Based Environment.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

R2022b: Use function in thread-based environments

This function supports thread-based environments.