Extract variables from a textfile in matlab - matlab

Question

I have a large text file (~3500 lines) which contains output data from an instrument. This consists of repeated entries from different measurements which are all formatted as follows:
* LogFrame Start *
variablename1: value
variablename2: value
...
variablename35: value
* LogFrame End *
Each logframe contains 35 variables. From these I would like to extract two, 'VName' and 'EMGMARKER' and put the associated values in columns in a matlab array, (i.e. the array should be (VName,EMGMARKER) which I can then associate with data from another output file which I already have in a matlab array. I have no idea where to start with this in order to extract the variables from this file, so hence my searches on the internet so far have been unsuccessful. Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You could use textscan:
C = textscan(file_id,'%s %f');
Then you extract the variables of interest like this:
VName_indices = strcmp(C{1},'VName:');
VName = C{2}(VName_indices);

Answer 2

If the variable names, so 'VName' and 'EMGMARKER' , are always the same you can just read through the file and search for lines containing them and extract data from there. I don't know what values they contain so you might have to use cells instead of arrays when extracting them.
fileID = fopen([target_path fname]); % open .txt file
% read the first line of the specified .txt file
current_line = fgetl(fileID);
counter = 1;
% go through the whole file
while(ischar(current_line))
if ~isempty(strfind(current_line, VName))
% now you find the location of the white space delimiter between name and value
d_loc = strfind(current_line,char(9));% if it's tab separated - so \t
d_loc = strfind(current_line,' ');% if it's a simple white space
variable_name{counter} = strtok(current_line);% strtok returns everything up until the first white space
variable_value{counter} = str2double(strtok(current_line(d_loc(1):end)));% returns everything form first to second white space and converts it into a double
end
% same block for EMGMARKER
counter = counter+1;
current_line = fgetl(fileID);% next line
end
You do the same for EMGMARKER and you have cells containing the data you need.