How to read .txt file with numbers and texts?

Hello. I have a .txt file including numbers and texts separated by tabs. I have tried dlmread, csvread, etc but not still able to get the file content as a matrix. I do not know what is wrong. I appreciate your help.

               file=strcat('C:\my_files\','1,3','.txt');
                 SCRIPTfile = char(file);         
                 dataSCRIPT=dlmread(SCRIPTfile);

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Use readtable(); it will figure everything out automatically.

Or you could make a small modification to the code I posted at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/285186-importing-data-without-knowing-number-of-columns#comment_368710

[Elaheh]

Hello again, "readtable" doesn't work. This is the error:

Input must be a row vector of characters.

[Walter Roberson]

Please execute

class(SCRIPTfile)
SCRIPTfile
t = readtable(SCRIPTfile);

and show the results, including the full text of any error message

[Elaheh]

hi

Error using readtable (line 143) Input must be a row vector of characters. Errors. Thank you.

Error in collectData (line 41) t = readtable(SCRIPTfile);

[Walter Roberson]

I still need the information

class(SCRIPTfile)
SCRIPTfile

[Elaheh]

Hi,

I attached the file I need to read. And thats the error I got.

Error using readtable (line 143) Input must be a row vector of characters. Error in collectData (line 41) t = readtable(SCRIPTfile);

[Walter Roberson]

if ~ischar(SCRIPTfile); error('SCRIPTFile is wrong data type, expected character vector, got "%s"', class(SCRIPTfile)); end

opt = detectImportOptions(file, 'Delimiter', '\t');
opt.VariableNames(1:10) = {'label', 'mode', 'dur', 'win', 'iti',  'rdB', 'ldB', 'resp', 'type', 'filename'}
t = readtable(SCRIPTfile, opt);

[Elaheh]

Thank you very much for your concern. So I used:

SCRIPTfile=strcat(root,'1,3','.txt'); 
opt = detectImportOptions(SCRIPTfile, 'Delimiter', '\t');
                  opt.VariableNames(1:10) = {'label', 'mode', 'dur', 'win', 'iti',  'rdB', 'ldB', 'resp', 'type', 'SCRIPTfile'}
                   t = readtable(SCRIPTfile, opt);

But got his error.

Undefined function or variable 'detectImportOptions'.

Error in collectData (line 39)
 opt = detectImportOptions(SCRIPTfile, 'Delimiter', '\t');

[Walter Roberson]

detectImportOptions() requires R2016b or later. Which version are you using?

Also, please show me the output of

disp(class(SCRIPTfile))

[Elaheh]

the output of disp(class(SCRIPTfile )) is cell. The version of MATLAB I am using is R2016a

[Walter Roberson]

Your variable root is not a character vector; it must be a cell array of character vectors. You should be using

SCRIPTfile=strcat(root{1},'1,3','.txt');

Since you do not have detectImportOptions, use:

fmts = repmat({'%f'}, 1, 11);
fmts([2,4, 10]) = {'%[^\t]'};
fmts(11) = {'%*[^\n]'};
fmt = strjoin(fmts,'');
fid = fopen(SCRIPTfile, 'rt');
datacell = textscan(fid, fmt, 'HeaderLines', 3, 'Delimiter', '\t');
fclose(fid);

datacell will now be a cell array of 10 entries, one per column of input. Column 2 will be a cell array of character vectors, corresponding to the word 'IMAGE'. Column 10 will be a cell array of character vectors, corresponding to the file name.

Column 4 will be a cell array of character vectors. This corresponds to the win column, which is a column that mostly contains numbers but also contains character entries such as WAIT . As I do not know what you want done with those WAIT entries, I left the entire column as text instead of trying to do a conversion.

[Elaheh]

Hi, Thank you so much for your efforts. By Root I meant SCRIPTroot='C:\my_files\laurier\dissertation\stimuli\stimuliBothExperiements\english experiment\';

It still gives errors. This time: Cell contents reference from a non-cell array object.

Error in collectData (line 33) SCRIPTfile=strcat(SCRIPTroot{1},str2,'.txt');

[Walter Roberson]

Try

SCRIPTfile = strcat(SCRIPTroot,str2,'.txt');
if iscell(SCRIPTfile); SCRIPTfile = SCRIPTfile{1}; end

[Elaheh]

This is the script now. SCRIPTfile=strcat('C:\my_files\english experiment\'{1},'1,3','.txt'); if iscell(SCRIPTfile); SCRIPTfile = SCRIPTfile{1}; end fmts = repmat({'%f'}, 1, 11); fmts([2,4, 10]) = {'%[^\t]'}; fmts(11) = {'%*[^\n]'}; fmt = strjoin(fmts,''); fid = fopen(SCRIPTfile, 'rt'); datacell = textscan(fid, fmt, 'HeaderLines', 3, 'Delimiter', '\t'); fclose(fid);

Cell contents reference from a non-cell array object. Error in collectData (line 33) SCRIPTfile=strcat(SCRIPTroot{1},'1,3','.txt');

[Walter Roberson]

remove the {1} from that line.