How can I write empty cells to a CSV file from MATLAB?

I am trying to write a matrix to a CSV file using MATLAB. However, I would like to have several empty rows at the beginning of the file. How can I do this without using filler values or a different file type?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

Since CSV files are a type of text file, you can use empty characters, character vectors, and strings to create empty cells. Then, use the 'writecell' function to write the empty cells and data matrix to a CSV file.

For example, to create a CSV file "data.csv" with the following contents:

,,,
,,,
1,2,3
4,5,6

You may use the following code:

data1 = [1 2 3];
data2 = [4 5 6];
c = {''; ''; data1; data2};
writecell(c,'data.csv')

[Les Beckham]

For what it's worth, data.csv generated by this example will actually look like this (as expected since there are three columns). Note only two commas in the first two rows (same as the other rows).

,,
,,
1,2,3
4,5,6