skip header in non-rectangular matrix - matlab

Question

I have consecutive .dat files which I want to read and input into a single matrix by concatenating the files vertically. The code I have so far works fine for simple numeric files with only tabs as delimiter.
import=[];
data=[];
for i = 1:32
data1=[import dlmread(sprintf('%d.dat',i))];
data=vertcat(data, data1);
clear data1;
end
and I take the correct output into the data matrix. But my file format is as follows:
first second third
0 11/15 08:57:42.000 54 67 82
1 11/15 09:48:47.010 49 32 31
...
As you can see I have three delimiters (: \t /) and headers only in the last three columns which are essentially the ones I want to read, that is I want a matrix:
54 67 82
49 32 31
...
I tried specifying the delimiters into the dlmwrite and how many rows/columns to skip but an error occurs in sprintf ('delimiter = sprintf(delimiter); % Interpret \t (if necessary)'). Does anyone have any idea how to go about this?
UPDATE:
I managed to get a little further
data=[];
for i = 1:32
filename = sprintf( '%d.dat',i );
data1=importdata(filename);%creates a cell array
data2=cell2mat(data1(3:end,:));%converts it to char
%The data, without the header, start from the 3rd row.
data=vertcat(data, data2); %concatenate vertically all the files
clear data1; clear data2;
end
%the data
a1=str2num(data(1:end,20:25));%the first data column is in char 20-25
a2=str2num(data(1:end,30:35));%the second data column is in char 30-35
The thing is that the last part takes too much time, over an hour has passed until I manually stopped it. Does anyone know a simpler and faster way to do this?

Answer 1

I managed to solve this myself so I post it here for future reference:
for i = 1:32
filename = sprintf( '%d.dat',i );
data1 = dlmread(filename,'',2,3);%start from row 2, headercolumn 3
data=vertcat(data, data1);
clear data1;
end
Now the data matrix contains only my data columns and it runs in a few seconds.