MATLAB: Reading space separated float values from tex file

Question

I am reading a text file using the textscan function of MATLAB. Problem here is that nothing is being read in value as the floating points are separated with three spaces and I am quite new in MATLAB programming to use some efficient syntax. My current code is given below:

Code:

values = textscan(input_file, '%f   %f   %f   %f   %f\n %*[^\n]');

The input file follows the following format:

File:

0.781844   952.962130   2251.430836   3412.734125   4456.016362
0.788094   983.834855   2228.432996   3196.415590   4378.885466
0.794344   967.653718   2200.798973   3119.844502   4374.097695

If the floating point values are # separated then the below statement works fine:

values = textscan(input_file, '%f#%f#%f#%f#%f\n %*[^\n]');

Is there any solution except for tokenization ?

Could you give a sample string from a file that you are trying to read (i.e. example how does your input look like)? — selyunin, Sep 09 '16 at 07:29

obchardon · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-09T11:35:25.380

1

You need to specify a delimiter, also you should activate the MultipleDelimsAsOne in order to treat the repeated space as a single delimiter:

value = textscan(input_file, '%f   %f   %f   %f   %f \n ','Delimiter',' ','MultipleDelimsAsOne',1);

If needed you can also specify several delimiters at the same time:

del = {';',' '};

edited Sep 09 '16 at 11:35

answered Sep 09 '16 at 07:50

obchardon

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this doesn't work. are you sure there are spaces in the format specifier string ? – Itban Saeed Sep 09 '16 at 10:00
Looking at the example in the documentation, it seems like you can just use a single space for the delimiter. Have you tried that? – Anders Schou Sep 09 '16 at 10:24
I edited my answer, I test this code on your sample and everything work. – obchardon Sep 09 '16 at 11:36
Thanks for the help :) – Itban Saeed Sep 19 '16 at 07:24

Anders Schou · Answer 2 · 2016-09-09T07:52:46.247

0

If you don't have to use textscan, you could probably use importdata. There you can specify the delimiter as a parameter. Documentation http://se.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/importdata.html

Code example

filename = 'myfile01.txt';
delimiterIn = '   ';
A = importdata(filename,delimiterIn);

edited Sep 09 '16 at 07:52

answered Sep 09 '16 at 07:39

Anders Schou

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I am reading the file, line by line. I may have to change the whole logic to use import data. – Itban Saeed Sep 09 '16 at 10:02

MATLAB: Reading space separated float values from tex file

2 Answers2