string concatenation from a .txt file matlab - matlab

I am trying to concatenate three lines (I want to leave the lines as is; 3 rows) from Shakespeare.txt file that shows:
To be,
or not to be:
that is the question.
My code right now is
fid = fopen('Shakespeare.txt')
while ~feof(fid)
a = fgets(fid);
b = fgets(fid);
c = fgets(fid);
end
fprintf('%s', strcat(a, b, c))
I'm supposed to use strcat and again, I want concatenated and leave them as three rows.

One method of keeping the rows separate is by storing the lines of the text file in a string array. Here a 1 by 3 string array is used. It may also be a good idea to use fgetl() which grabs each line of the text file at a time. Concantenating the outputs of fgetl() as strings may also be another option to ensure the they do not get stored as character (char) arrays. Also using the \n indicates to line break when printing the strings within the array String_Array.
fid = fopen('Shakespeare.txt');
while ~feof(fid)
String_Array(1) = string(fgetl(fid));
String_Array(2) = string(fgetl(fid));
String_Array(3) = string(fgetl(fid));
end
fprintf('%s\n', String_Array);
Ran using MATLAB R2019b

Related

Read first line of CSV file that contains text in cells

I have a deco.csv file and I only want to extract B1 to K1 (20 columns of the first rows), i.e. Deco_0001 to Deco_0020.
I first make a pre-allocation:
names = string(20,1);
and what I want is when calling S(1), it gives Deco_0001; when calling S(20), it gives Deco_0020.
I have read through textscan but I do not know how to specify the range is first row and running from column 2 to column 21 of the csv file.
Also, I want save the names individually but what I have tried just save the first line in only one cell:
fid=fopen('deco.csv');
C=textscan(fid, '%s',1);
fclose(fid);
Thanks!
It's not very elegant, but this should work for you:
fid=fopen('deco.csv');
C=textscan(fid, '%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s%s',1,'Delimiter',',');
fclose(fid);
S = cell(20,1);
for ii = 1:20
S{ii} = C{ii+1};
end

Matlab Error: ()-indexing must appear last in an index expression

I have this code and want to write an array in a tab delimited txt file :
fid = fopen('oo.txt', 'wt+');
for x = 1 :length(s)
fprintf(fid, '%s\t\n', s(x)(1)) ;
end;
fclose(fid);
but I receive this error :
Error: ()-indexing must appear last in an index expression.
how should i call s(x)(1)? s is an array
s <2196017x1 cell>
when I use this code I get no error but return me some characters not words.
fprintf(fid, '%s\t\n', ( s{x}{1})) ;
With MATLAB, you cannot immediately index into the result of a function using () without first assigning it to a temporary variable (Octave does allow this though). This is due to some of the ambiguities that happen when you allow this.
tmp = s(x);
fprintf(fid, '%s\t\n', tmp(1)) ;
There are some ways around this but they aren't pretty
It is unclear what exactly your data structure is, but it looks like s is a cell so you should really be using {} indexing to access it's contents
fprintf(fid, '%s\t\n', s{x});
Update
If you're trying to read individual words in from your input file and then write those out to a tab-delimited file, I'd probably do something like the following:
fid = fopen('input.txt', 'r');
contents = fread(fid, '*char')';
fclose(fid)
% Break a string into words and yield a cell array of strings
words = regexp(contents, '\s+', 'split');
% Write these out to a file separated by tabs
fout = fopen('output.tsv', 'w');
fprintf(fout, '%s\t', words{:});
fclose(fout)

How do I read comma separated values from a .txt file in MATLAB using textscan()?

I have a .txt file with rows consisting of three elements, a word and two numbers, separated by commas.
For example:
a,142,5
aa,3,0
abb,5,0
ability,3,0
about,2,0
I want to read the file and put the words in one variable, the first numbers in another, and the second numbers in another but I am having trouble with textscan.
This is what I have so far:
File = [LOCAL_DIR 'filetoread.txt'];
FID_File = fopen(File,'r');
[words,var1,var2] = textscan(File,'%s %f %f','Delimiter',',');
fclose(FID_File);
I can't seem to figure out how to use a delimiter with textscan.
horchler is indeed correct. You first need to open up the file with fopen which provides a file ID / pointer to the actual file. You'd then use this with textscan. Also, you really only need one output variable because each "column" will be placed as a separate column in a cell array once you use textscan. You also need to specify the delimiter to be the , character because that's what is being used to separate between columns. This is done by using the Delimiter option in textscan and you specify the , character as the delimiter character. You'd then close the file after you're done using fclose.
As such, you just do this:
File = [LOCAL_DIR 'filetoread.txt'];
f = fopen(File, 'r');
C = textscan(f, '%s%f%f', 'Delimiter', ',');
fclose(f);
Take note that the formatting string has no spaces because the delimiter flag will take care of that work. Don't add any spaces. C will contain a cell array of columns. Now if you want to split up the columns into separate variables, just access the right cells:
names = C{1};
num1 = C{2};
num2 = C{3};
These are what the variables look like now by putting the text you provided in your post to a file called filetoread.txt:
>> names
names =
'a'
'aa'
'abb'
'ability'
'about'
>> num1
num1 =
142
3
5
3
2
>> num2
num2 =
5
0
0
0
0
Take note that names is a cell array of names, so accessing the right name is done by simply doing n = names{ii}; where ii is the name you want to access. You'd access the values in the other two variables using the normal indexing notation (i.e. n = num1(ii); or n = num2(ii);).

Read textfile with a mix of floats, integers and strings in the same column

Loading a well formatted and delimited text file in Matlab is relatively simple, but I struggle with a text file that I have to read in. Sadly I can not change the structure of the source file, so I have to deal with what I have.
The basic file structure is:
123 180 (two integers, white space delimited)
1.5674e-8
.
.
(floating point numbers in column 1, column 2 empty)
.
.
100 4501 (another two integers)
5.3456e-4 (followed by even more floating point numbers)
.
.
.
.
45 String (A integer in column 1, string in column 2)
.
.
.
A simple
[data1,data2]=textread('filename.txt','%f %s', ...
'emptyvalue', NaN)
Does not work.
How can I properly filter the input data? All examples I found online and in the Matlab help so far deal with well structured data, so I am a bit lost at where to start.
As I have to read a whole bunch of those files >100 I rather not iterate trough every single line in every file. I hope there is a much faster approach.
EDIT:
I made a sample file available here: test.txt (google drive)
I've looked at the text file you supplied and tried to draw a few general conclusions -
When there are two integers on a line, the second integer corresponds to the number of rows following.
You always have (two integers (A, B) followed by "B" floats), repeated twice.
After that you have some free-form text (or at least, I couldn't deduce anything useful about the format after that).
This is a messy format so I doubt there are going to be any nice solutions. Some useful general principles are:
Use fgetl when you need to read a single line (it reads up to the next newline character)
Use textscan when it's possible to read multiple lines at once - it is much faster than reading a line at a time. It has many options for how to parse, which it is worth getting to know (I recommend typing doc textscan and reading the entire thing).
If in doubt, just read the lines in as strings and then analyse them in MATLAB.
With that in mine, here is a simple parser for your files. It will probably need some modifications as you are able to infer more about the structure of the files, but it is reasonably fast on the ~700 line test file you gave.
I've just given the variables dummy names like "a", "b", "floats" etc. You should change them to something more specific to your needs.
function output = readTestFile(filename)
fid = fopen(filename, 'r');
% Read the first line
line = '';
while isempty(line)
line = fgetl(fid);
end
nums = textscan(line, '%d %d', 'CollectOutput', 1);
a = nums{1}(1);
b = nums{1}(2);
% Read 'b' of the next lines:
contents = textscan(fid, '%f', b);
floats1 = contents{1};
% Read the next line:
line = '';
while isempty(line)
line = fgetl(fid);
end
nums = textscan(line, '%d %d', 'CollectOutput', 1);
c = nums{1}(1);
d = nums{1}(2);
% Read 'd' of the next lines:
contents = textscan(fid, '%f', d);
floats2 = contents{1};
% Read the rest:
rest = textscan(fid, '%s', 'Delimiter', '\n');
output.a = a;
output.b = b;
output.c = c;
output.d = d;
output.floats1 = floats1;
output.floats2 = floats2;
output.rest = rest{1};
end
You can read in the file line by line using the lower-level functions, then parse each line manually.
You open the file handle like in C
fid = fopen(filename);
Then you can read a line using fgetl
line = fgetl(fid);
String tokenize it on spaces is probably the best first pass, storing each piece in a cell array (because a matrix doesn't support ragged arrays)
colnum = 1;
while ~isempty(rem)
[token, rem] = strtok(rem, ' ');
entries{linenum, colnum} = token;
colnum = colnum + 1;
end
then you can wrap all of that inside another while loop to iterate over the lines
linenum = 1;
while ~feof(fid)
% getl, strtok, index bookkeeping as above
end
It's up to you whether it's best to parse the file as you read it or read it into a cell array first and then go over it afterwards.
Your cell entries are all going to be strings (char arrays), so you will need to use str2num to convert them to numbers. It does a good job of working out the format so that might be all you need.

Skipping Lines in Matlab Code

I am trying to create a Matlab code that strips the header off of a text file and proceeds in the pattern of recording a line and skipping the next three lines.
I have figured out how to strip the header, but do not know how to code so that the program only records lines 1 (after the header is removed) 5,9, 13, etc.
Any recommendations?
I don't know how your data is formatted, so the actual code you use may differ, but this should give you the idea
file_lines = {};
fid = fopen(filename);
while 1
text_line = fgetl(fid);
%quit reading on an empty line
if ~ischar(text_line)
break
end
%keep the lines that 1 as the first value (this is what you wanted, right?)
data_line = str2num(text_line)
if(data_line(1,1) == 1)
file_lines{end+1} = data_line;
end
end
fclose(fid);