Textscan and Regexp Cell Data Layout - matlab

Question

I'm trying to make some logic work with some legacy matlab code. I figured the easist thing was to make the data look the same as what the code is expecting.
I'm reading the relevant data from a CSV file, it's pretty simple -- but the format for the IDs changed from a simple number to an ID of the form [YY,ZZZZ].
As an example, the 'previous' CSV data looked like:
1,Simple,Data
2,More,Data-Dash-Data
3,Even,More
4,Really,More
The 'new' CSV data looks like:
[01,0001],Simple,Data
[02,1001],More,Data-Dash-Data
[03,9876],Even,More
[04,1234],Really,More
Previously, to read in the data, this logic was used:
fid = fopen(fileName);
data = textscan(fid,'%s%s%s%*s','Delimiter',',');
When this was done against the 'previous' CSV data, it returned data that look like this:
data =
1×3 cell array
{4×1 cell} {4×1 cell} {4×1 cell}
The cells then look like:
K>> data{:}
ans =
4×1 cell array
'1'
'2'
'3'
'4'
ans =
4×1 cell array
'Simple'
'More'
'Even'
'Data'
ans =
4×1 cell array
'Data'
'Data-Dash-Data'
'More'
'Data'
So to handle the ID of the form [YY,ZZZZ], I had to modify the 'textscan' logic to handle the new ID format that we're using. To do that, I'm using a regexp function:
fid = fopen(fileName);
rawData = textscan(fid,'%s','Delimiter','\n');
data = regexp(rawData{1},'[ \-\/\w]*([\[][^\)\]]*[\]])?', 'match')
This then, after it reads in the data, gives me data that is formatted like this:
K>> data
data =
4×1 cell array
{1×3 cell}
{1×3 cell}
{1×3 cell}
{1×3 cell}
K>> data{:}
ans =
1×3 cell array
'[01,0001]' 'Simple' 'Data'
ans =
1×3 cell array
'[02,1001]' 'More' 'Data-Dash-Data'
ans =
1×3 cell array
'[03,9876]' 'Even' 'More'
ans =
1×3 cell array
'[04,1234]' 'Really' 'More'
So you can see that it has the correct data in it -- but the data is laid out differently which is breaking on the legacy code. So my question is how can I make the 'new' data be laid out like this as it was coming out of the 'textscan' logic:
data =
1×3 cell array
{4×1 cell} {4×1 cell} {4×1 cell}

Answer 1

You can use fileread to read in the raw file directly. Afterwards, you can use a regex which splits on either a comma, not followed by a digit, or on a carriage return.
c = regexp(fileread(fileName),',(?!\d)|\r\n','split');
formattedData = {c(1:3:end)',c(2:3:end)',c(3:3:end)'};
>> formattedData
formattedData =
1×3 cell array
{4×1 cell} {4×1 cell} {4×1 cell}