Loading delimited text file

I'm having trouble loading the following text file. That is delimited as such: --------------

116,1.7874926329,-426.0292053223,45.1162757874; 13P 226

116,2.7424895763,-426.0281066895,45.0740852356; 15P 227

116,3.7051227093,-426.0320434570,45.0093040466; 17P 228

-------------- (ignore spaces between lines, that's just for the forum)

I want all the rows but only columns 1-3.

I tried dlmread('data.txt', ',', 0, 1) but that gives me a bunch of 0 rows and doesn't capture all the rows.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

use importdata(). Ignore the empty lines between data lines. Also ignore your dash lines.

>> a=importdata('test.txt')

a =

            116       1.7875      -426.03       45.116           13          226
            116       2.7425      -426.03       45.074           15          227
            116       3.7051      -426.03       45.009           17          228

>> b=a(:,1:3)

b =

            116       1.7875      -426.03
            116       2.7425      -426.03
            116       3.7051      -426.03

[lex]

Using 'importdata' the result is a single-column cell.

Here is some sample data:

116,1.7874926329,-426.0292053223,45.1162757874; 13P 226

116,2.7424895763,-426.0281066895,45.0740852356; 15P 227

116,3.7051227093,-426.0320434570,45.0093040466; 17P 228

116,4.6660690308,-426.0295410156,44.9241867065; 19P 229

116,5.6226024628,-426.0305480957,44.8177299500; 21P 230

[Fangjun Jiang]

All right, importdata() differs at different MATLAB version.

fid=fopen('test.txt','rt');

a=textscan(fid,'%f,%f,%f%*[^\n]','collectoutput',1);

fclose(fid);

a =

[5x3 double]

>> a{1}

ans =

116.0000 1.7875 -426.0292

116.0000 2.7425 -426.0281

116.0000 3.7051 -426.0320

116.0000 4.6661 -426.0295

116.0000 5.6226 -426.0305

[lex]

I receive an error due to 'CollectOutput':

a=textscan(fid,'%f,%f,%f%*[^\n]','CollectOutput',1);

??? Error using ==> textscan

Unknown option 'CollectOutput'.

[Fangjun Jiang]

Then don't use it. a=textscan(fid,'%f,%f,%f%*[^\n]') works too. The result is in a{1},a{2},a{3}.