Error: Error using load Unknown text on line number 1 of ASCII file cats.csv "Sex".

Hello everyone,

I am trying to load a csv. document on to Matlab but I'm struggling. MY csv file has three titles "Sex, Bwt and Hwt". The error I am getting is as below:

Error using load

Unknown text on line number 1 of ASCII file cats.csv

"Sex".

I tried to use readmatrix as well, but then I can't plot. I'm new to MATLAB and I have no idea what I am doing. Please help.

Best Regards

[Walter Roberson]

load() can only be used for csv files that contain no text, or only have text on lines that begin with %

Answer 1

[Stephan]

try readtable instead.

[Walter Roberson]

Or importdata sometimes.

Or fopen / textscan / fclose

[Adekemi]

This really helped, thanks

Answer 2

[Farhad]

Try to save it as CSV instead of CSV UTF-8.

[Walter Roberson]

This is irrelevant in this case.

The problem is that the user had a csv file with a line of text headers. load() can only handle text headers in the restricted case that the first non-whitespace on each header line happens to be % . This is true regardless of whether the csv file is US-ASCII or UTF-8 .

filename = "cats.csv";
lines = ["Sex, Bwt, Hwt"; "M, 3.2, 11"; "F, 1.4, 14.2"];

writelines(lines, filename, 'Encoding', 'US-ASCII');
%verify contents
dbtype(filename)

1     Sex, Bwt, Hwt
2     M, 3.2, 11
3     F, 1.4, 14.2

%attempt load
try
    data = load(filename);
    fprintf('load US-ASCII worked!\n');
    data
catch ME
    fprintf('load US-ASCII failed!\n');
    ME
end

load US-ASCII failed!

ME = 
  MException with properties:

    identifier: 'MATLAB:load:unknownText'
       message: 'Unknown text on line number 1 of ASCII file cats.csv↵"Sex".'
         cause: {}
         stack: [3×1 struct]
    Correction: []

%attempt readtable
try
    data = readtable(filename);
    fprintf('readtable US-ASCII worked!\n');
    data
catch ME
    fprintf('readtable US-ASCII failed!\n');
    ME
end

readtable US-ASCII worked!

data = 2×3 table
     Sex     Bwt    Hwt 
    _____    ___    ____

    {'M'}    3.2      11
    {'F'}    1.4    14.2

writelines(lines, filename, 'Encoding', 'UTF-8');
%verify contents
dbtype(filename)

1     Sex, Bwt, Hwt
2     M, 3.2, 11
3     F, 1.4, 14.2

%attempt load
try
    data = load(filename);
    fprintf('load UTF-8 worked!\n');
    data
catch ME
    fprintf('load UTF-8 failed!\n');
    ME
end

load UTF-8 failed!

ME = 
  MException with properties:

    identifier: 'MATLAB:load:unknownText'
       message: 'Unknown text on line number 1 of ASCII file cats.csv↵"Sex".'
         cause: {}
         stack: [3×1 struct]
    Correction: []

%attempt readtable
try
    data = readtable(filename);
    fprintf('readtable UTF-8 worked!\n');
    data
catch ME
    fprintf('readtable UTF-8 failed!\n');
    ME
end

readtable UTF-8 worked!

data = 2×3 table
     Sex     Bwt    Hwt 
    _____    ___    ____

    {'M'}    3.2      11
    {'F'}    1.4    14.2

Notice the error from load() is the same in both cases, and both cases work fine for readtable() . The problem is that the file format is not suitable for load.