How do I load ASCII dat file to MATLAB

After reading some articles in the forum, I used textscan to load my .dat file to MATLAB. Unfortunately, MATLAB only read the first line of my .dat file.

• load does not work, most likely because 7th column is double followed by "....."

fid=fopen('newtext.dat');
C=textscan(fid,'%d %d %d %d %d %d %d');

this led to

C=
[775841]    [644]    [552]    [1185]    [617]    [534]    [1153]

Any hints or answers to this problem would be appreciated!

Here's a sample of my .dat file:

775841      643.5      551.6     1185.0      617.3      533.6     1153.0  .....
775843      643.6      552.3     1185.0      621.0      531.8     1153.0  .....
775845      643.6      552.9     1185.0      624.7      530.1     1152.0  .....
775847      643.4      553.4     1185.0      625.6      529.7     1153.0  .....
775849      643.1      553.4     1186.0      622.8      530.7     1154.0  .....
775851      642.8      553.5     1187.0      620.0      531.7     1154.0  .....
775853      642.9      554.0     1187.0      616.6      534.4     1154.0  .....
775855      643.1      554.8     1186.0      613.3      537.3     1154.0  .....
775857      643.5      555.5     1185.0      614.4      538.2     1154.0  .....
775859      643.7      555.5     1184.0      618.7      536.3     1155.0  .....

Answer 1

[dpb]

fid=fopen('newtext.dat');
fmt=[repmat('%f',1,7) '.....'];  % include the junk as pattern matching
C=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',true));

should give a single array of all the values.

[Kenny Kim]

Hi, thank you for the code. However, it seems that somehow the code is not working for mine. For

    C=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',true));

the code has red underlines under "C" and first ")". MATLAB says invalid syntax at "C" and parse error at ")". Also, the code is recommending me to replace comma with semicolon right after 'collectoutput'.

Did you have the same problem as well?

[Joseph Cheng]

well if you take some time and did some debugging you'll see the bug in the code which is a missing "'" in the repmat call for the fmt. which then would then read

 fmt=[repmat('%f',1,7) '.....'];

[Kenny Kim]

Yes, I tried that and it worked! Thank you.

[dpb]

"...a missing "'" in the repmat call for the fmt."

Dang! What ya' get's for "air code".

[Joseph Cheng]

I just wish "air code" was as flashy as "air guitar". I would like to say most of my typos are "purposely" put to test the person but they are usually just "air code" mistakes.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Please attach the file with the paper clip icon in case anyone wants to try some code on it to help you. Also, maybe the ..... is causing a problem. Maybe either see if you can get rid of it, or try putting ..... into the format string in textscan(). Also, since you're using floating point numbers, not integers, you'll have to use %f instead of %d.

[Kenny Kim]

It seems that I can't upload the file because it is in .dat format. I tried using %f instead of %d. The numbers in C became more accurate (643.5000 instead of 644) which is helpful. Still C is only using first line. I think you are right that the dots at the end are causing the problem but I don't know how to get rid of it quickly. The whole file has about 28000 lines so I can't do it by hand.