Project DATA: read, process and visualize

Hi MathWorks community,

i´m desperately seekin´ for help with my project which is actually "only" plot a couple of curves in a PLOT3 diagram. I thought it wouldn´t be as much work, so I did it the first place by hand, like creating variables and put the data in.. just took me 3h.

However, I wanna use a script to import datam which look like this:

Panel 2 2013-11-11 17-26_15.dat

 Pyrh. (w/m2)     

         741.38  
         741.04  
         743.03

Like tabbed rows in a *.txt file. So, I tried to use the automatic function generation function. It´s working awesome for the one file (Panel 2 2013-11-11 17-26_15.dat).

The file looks like this:

function [VV,IA] = importfile(filename, startRow, endRow)
%IMPORTFILE Import numeric data from a text file as column vectors.
%   [VV,IA] = IMPORTFILE(FILENAME) Reads data from text file FILENAME for
%   the default selection.
%
%   [VV,IA] = IMPORTFILE(FILENAME, STARTROW, ENDROW) Reads data from rows
%   STARTROW through ENDROW of text file FILENAME.
%
% Example:
%   [VV,IA] = importfile('Panel 2 2013-11-11  17-10_15.dat',3, 28);
%
%    See also TEXTSCAN.

% Auto-generated by MATLAB on 2013/11/14 12:14:07

%%Initialize variables.
if nargin<=2
    startRow = 3;
    endRow = inf;
end

% Read columns of data as strings:
% For more information, see the TEXTSCAN documentation.
formatSpec = '%*16s%16s%16s%[^\n\r]';

%%Open the text file.
fileID = fopen(filename,'r');

%%Read columns of data according to format string.
% This call is based on the structure of the file used to generate this
% code. If an error occurs for a different file, try regenerating the code
% from the Import Tool.
dataArray = textscan(fileID, formatSpec, endRow(1)-startRow(1)+1, 'Delimiter', '', 'WhiteSpace', '', 'HeaderLines', startRow(1)-1, 'ReturnOnError', false);
for block=2:length(startRow)
    frewind(fileID);
    dataArrayBlock = textscan(fileID, formatSpec, endRow(block)-startRow(block)+1, 'Delimiter', '', 'WhiteSpace', '', 'HeaderLines', startRow(block)-1, 'ReturnOnError', false);
    for col=1:length(dataArray)
        dataArray{col} = [dataArray{col};dataArrayBlock{col}];
    end
end

%%Close the text file.
fclose(fileID);

%%Convert the contents of columns containing numeric strings to numbers.
% Replace non-numeric strings with NaN.
raw = repmat({''},length(dataArray{1}),length(dataArray)-1);
for col=1:length(dataArray)-1
    raw(1:length(dataArray{col}),col) = dataArray{col};
end
numericData = NaN(size(dataArray{1},1),size(dataArray,2));

for col=[1,2]
    % Converts strings in the input cell array to numbers. Replaced non-numeric
    % strings with NaN.
    rawData = dataArray{col};
    for row=1:size(rawData, 1);
        % Create a regular expression to detect and remove non-numeric prefixes and
        % suffixes.
        regexstr = '(?<prefix>.*?)(?<numbers>([-]*(\d+[\,]*)+[\.]{0,1}\d*[eEdD]{0,1}[-+]*\d*[i]{0,1})|([-]*(\d+[\,]*)*[\.]{1,1}\d+[eEdD]{0,1}[-+]*\d*[i]{0,1}))(?<suffix>.*)';
        try
            result = regexp(rawData{row}, regexstr, 'names');
            numbers = result.numbers;

              % Detected commas in non-thousand locations.
              invalidThousandsSeparator = false;
              if any(numbers==',');
                  thousandsRegExp = '^\d+?(\,\d{3})*\.{0,1}\d*$';
                  if isempty(regexp(thousandsRegExp, ',', 'once'));
                      numbers = NaN;
                      invalidThousandsSeparator = true;
                  end
              end
              % Convert numeric strings to numbers.
              if ~invalidThousandsSeparator;
                  numbers = textscan(strrep(numbers, ',', ''), '%f');
                  numericData(row, col) = numbers{1};
                  raw{row, col} = numbers{1};
              end
          catch me
          end
      end
  end

%%Allocate imported array to column variable names
VV = cell2mat(raw(:, 1));
IA = cell2mat(raw(:, 2));

So, at that point I have 2 problems:

1. The function is overwriting the VV and IA everytime?

2. I found some lines to get the names of the files, but I´m not able to write a routine to use the first .dat file by running the import function, take out the desired data and save it in a variable. And then take the next one.

The names of the files are in a 61x1 struct and there as chars like 'Panel 2 2013-11-11 17-10_15.dat', which would fit perfectly in the importfile function.

Can anyone of you guys help me with those two questions?

Kind regards, Alex