retriving a text file content information in Matlab - matlab

Question

I have a .txt file which includes 300 lines. For example the first line is:
ANSWER: correct: yes, time: 6.880674, guess: Lay, action: Lay, file: 16
or the second line is:
ANSWER: correct: no, time: 7.150422, guess: Put on top, action: Stir, file: 18
Only 'time' and 'file' values are numbers and the others are string.
I want to store the values of "correct", "time", "guess", "action" and "file" of the whole 300 lines in the different variables (like some arrays).
How can I do this in the Matlab?

Answer 1

Option 1:
You can use textscan with the following formatSpec:
formatSpec = 'ANSWER: correct:%s time:%f guess:%s action:%s file: %f';
data = textscan(fileID,formatSpec,'Delimiter',',');
where fileID is the file identifier obtained by fopen.
Option 2:
Another option is to use readtable, with the formatting above (directly with the file name, no fileID):
data = readtable('53485991.txt','Format',formatSpec,'Delimiter',',',...
'ReadVariableNames',false);
% the next lines are just to give the table variables some meaningful names:
varNames = strsplit(fmt,{'ANSWER',':','%s',' ','%f'});
data.Properties.VariableNames = varNames(2:end-1);
The result (ignore the values, as I messed that example a little bit while playing with it):
data =
4×5 table
correct time guess action file
_______ ______ _______________ ______ ____
'yes' 6.8888 'Lay' 'Lay' 16
'no' 7.8762 'Put on top' 'Stir' 18
'no' 7.1503 'Put on bottom' 'Stir' 3
'no' 7.151 'go' 'Stir' 270
The advantage in option 2 is that a table is a much more convenient way to hold these data than a cell array (which is the output of textscan).

Answer 2

Use fgetl to get a line of the file and while loop to read all of the lines.
For each line, use regexp to partition the string into cells by : and , delimiter. Then, use strip to remove leading and trailing whitespace for each cell.
Here is the solution:
f = fopen('a.txt');
aline = fgetl(f);
i = 1;
while ischar(aline)
content = strip(regexp(aline,':|,','split'));
correct{i} = content{3};
time(i) = str2double(content{5});
guess{i}= content{7};
action{i} = content{9};
file(i) = str2double(content{11});
i = i + 1;
aline = fgetl(f);
end
fclose(f);
Example:
Suppose a.txt file looks like this
ANSWER: correct: yes, time: 6.880674, guess: Lay, action: Lay, file: 16
ANSWER: correct: no, time: 7.150422, guess: Put on top, action: Stir, file: 18
After executing the script, the results are
correct =
1×2 cell array
'yes' 'no'
time =
6.8807 7.1504
guess =
1×2 cell array
'Lay' 'Put on top'
action =
1×2 cell array
'Lay' 'Stir'
file =
16 18