How to load txt file with a known number of rows with different lengths of columns??

Hey all,

I tried loading my txt file that has different number of columns usnig different commands and down i will state each one with its problem:

1] load: doesn't work for different number of columns.

2] importdata: introduced in my txt two additional lines!!

3] dlmread: padded my data with zeros to make all columns the same length!

Can anyone suggest another command!! dlmread seems the best out of theses three commands I tried, but my data is very sensitive specially to zeros!!even if I tried to eliminate them, there is no way I can know whether this zero is one of my data or the padded one!!

[Jan]

• What does "introduced two addional lines" mean?
• Why are the data padded by dlmread to make the columns the smae length?! You've said, that there is a different number of columns, but do the columns have a different length in addition?!

Please show a minimal example of a possible file, and explain the wanted output format. DLMREAD creates a matrix, and matrices must be rectangular. Therefore the padding is expected and wanted.

[Yasmin Tamimi]

Sorry I haven't made my question clear! I am having a txt file with 10 rows but the length of the columns in each row is different. By "introduced two additional lines" I mean instead of having of having only two rows now I'm getting 12 rows!! And now when the data is padded how can I know which one is the data and which one is the padded?! How can I just load and read the data without padding it with anything?

Answer 1

[Jan]

What about textscan? It appears as tag already, but not in the text of the question.

[Yasmin Tamimi]

It was one of the commands I tried but didn't help.