Read multiple data from a MATLAB file - matlab

Question

I am currently trying to read data from a text file written exactly like this:
Height = 10
Length = 10
NodeX = 11
NodeY = 11
K = 10
I've written a small code like this
fileID = fopen('input.dat','r');
[a, b] = fscanf(fileID, '%s %f')
And I get the following answer:
a =
72
101
105
103
104
116
b =
1
It seems quite obvious I am not mananging to specify the format specification.
I would like to know how to pick a string along with a float multiple times in the same file.

Answer 1

As the documentation for fscanf states:
If formatSpec contains a combination of numeric and character
specifiers, then fscanf converts each character to its numeric
equivalent. This conversion occurs even when the format explicitly
skips all numeric values (for example, formatSpec is '%*d %s').
MATLAB can be annoyingly bad at reading mixed data types. One possible alternative is to read each line and split up your data using a simple regular expression:
fileID = fopen('results.txt','r');
mydata = {};
ii = 1;
while ~feof(fileID) % While we're not at the end of the file
tline = fgetl(fileID); % Get next line
mydata(ii,:) = regexp(tline, '([a-zA-Z])* = (\d*)', 'tokens');
ii = ii + 1;
end
fclose(fileID);
This returns a 5 x 1 cell array where each cell contains 2 cells (slightly annoying, but you can pull them out) that match your data. In this case, mydata{1}{1} is Height and mydata{1}{2} is 10.
Edit:
And you can flatten your cell array with a reshape call:
mydata = reshape([mydata{:}], 2, [])';
Which turns mydata in this case into a 5x2 cell array.

Answer 2

The fscanf function is a low-level I/O function and is often not the best choice for such rather high-level file input. One alternative would be to use the textscan function, which allows quite advanced format specifications:
fileID = fopen('input.dat','r');
C = textscan(fileID,'%s = %d')
which creates a 1x2 cell array. The first cell C{1} contains another 5x1 cell, where each field contains the name of the field, e.g. 'Height'. The second cell C{2} contains a 5x1 vector containing all integer values from the file.