Reading in points from a file - matlab

I have a txt file in which each row has the x, y ,z coordinates of the point. seperated by space.I want to read points from this txt file and store it as a matrix in matlab of the form [Pm_1 Pm_2 ... Pm_nmod] where each Pm_n is a point .Could someone help me with this?
I have to actually enter it into a code which accepts the model as :
"model - matrix with model points, [Pm_1 Pm_2 ... Pm_nmod]"

I use importdata heavily for this. It reads all kinds of formats ; I normally use other methods like dlmread only if importdata doesn't work.
Usage is as simple as M = importdata('data.txt');

Just use
load -ascii data.txt
That creates a matrix called `data' in your workspace whose rows contain the coordinates.
You can find all the details of the conversion in the documentation for the load command.

Related

MATLAB: making a histogram plot from csv files read and put into cells?

Unfortunately I am not too tech proficient and only have a basic MATLAB/programming background...
I have several csv data files in a folder, and would like to make a histogram plot of all of them simultaneously in order to compare them. I am not sure how to go about doing this. Some digging online gave a script:
d=dir('*.csv'); % return the list of csv files
for i=1:length(d)
m{i}=csvread(d(i).name); % put into cell array
end
The problem is I cannot now simply write histogram(m(i)) command, because m(i) is a cell type not a csv file type (I'm not sure I'm using this terminology correctly, but MATLAB definitely isn't accepting the former).
I am not quite sure how to proceed. In fact, I am not sure what exactly is the nature of the elements m(i) and what I can/cannot do with them. The histogram command wants a matrix input, so presumably I would need a 'vector of matrices' and a command which plots each of the vector elements (i.e. matrices) on a separate plot. I would have about 14 altogether, which is quite a lot and would take a long time to load, but I am not sure how to proceed more efficiently.
Generalizing the question:
I will later be writing a script to reduce the noise and smooth out the data in the csv file, and binarise it (the csv files are for noisy images with vague shapes, and I want to distinguish these shapes by setting a cut off for the pixel intensity/value in the csv matrix, such as to create a binary image showing these shapes). Ideally, I would like to apply this to all of the images in my folder at once so I can shift out which images are best for analysis. So my question is, how can I run a script with all of the csv files in my folder so that I can compare them all at once? I presume whatever technique I use for the histogram plots can apply to this too, but I am not sure.
It should probably be better to write a script which:
-makes a histogram plot and/or runs the binarising script for each csv file in the folder
-and puts all of the images into a new, designated folder, so I can sift through these.
I would greatly appreciate pointers on how to do this. As I mentioned, I am quite new to programming and am getting overwhelmed when looking at suggestions, seeing various different commands used to apparently achieve the same thing- reading several files at once.
The function csvread returns natively a matrix. I am not sure but it is possible that if some elements inside the csv file are not numbers, Matlab automatically makes a cell array out of the output. Since I don't know the structure of your csv-files I will recommend you trying out some similar functions(readtable, xlsread):
M = readtable(d(i).name) % Reads table like data, most recommended
M = xlsread(d(i).name) % Excel like structures, but works also on similar data
Try them out and let me know if it worked. If not please upload a file sample.
The function csvread(filename)
always return the matrix M that is numerical matrix and will never give the cell as return.
If you have textual data inside the .csv file, it will give you an error for not having the numerical data only. The only reason I can see for using the cell array when reading the files is if the dimensions of individual matrices read from each file are different, for example first .csv file contains data organised as 3xA, and second .csv file contains data organised as 2xB, so you can place them all into a single structure.
However, it is still possible to use histogram on cell array, by extracting the element as an array instead of extracting it as cell element.
If M is a cell matrix, there are two options for extracting the data:
M(i) and M{i}. M(i) will give you the cell element, and cannot be used for histogram, however M{i} returns element in its initial form which is numerical matrix.
TL;DR use histogram(M{i}) instead of histogram(M(i)).

read tow Column txt file in specific directory and import to matlab

I have two Column txt file every Column contain the speed on dc motor. I want to plot every Column with the time and compaire the two curves.
I tried this code, but not working:
fid = fopen('C:\Users\Hussam Yonis\Desktop\recive.txt','r');
KK = fscanf(fid,'%f %f',[2,50]);
t=0:0.05:0.05*length(a(:,1))-0.05;
plot(t,fid(:,1),'b',t,fid(:,2),'r')
fid is just a pointer corresponding to the opened file and does not have several dimensions, so fid(:,2) will give a matrix dimensions exceeded error. You want to plot the data that came out of the file, KK in your case. Try this:
plot(t,KK(:,1),'b',t,KK(:,2),'r')
I also suspect you might have your indexing the wrong way round, although as your code is not minimal, complete and verifiable, it is difficult to say. You might find you need the following command:
plot(t,KK(1,:),'b',t,KK(2,:),'r')

Simplest way to read space delimited text file matlab

Ok, so I'm struggling with the most mundane of things I have a space delimited text file with a header in the first row and a row per observation and I'd like to open that file in matlab. If I do this in R I have no problem at all, it'll create the most basic matrix and voila!
But MATLAB seems to be annoying with this...
Example of the text file:
"picFile" "subjCode" "gender"
"train_1" 504 "m"
etc.
Can I get something like a matrix at all? I would then like to have MATLAB pull out some data by doing data(1,2) for example.
What would be the simplest way to do this?
It seems like having to write a loop using f-type functions is just a waste of time...
If you have a sufficiently new version of Matlab (R2013b+, I believe), you can use readtable, which is very much like how R does it:
T = readtable('data.txt','Delimiter',' ')
There are many functions for manipulating tables and converting back and forth between them and other data types such as cell arrays.
There are some other options in the data import and export section of the Statistics toolbox that should work in older versions of Matlab:
tblread: output in terms of separate variables for strings and numbers
caseread: output in terms of a char array
tdfread: output in terms of a struct
Alternatively, textscan should be able to accomplish what you need and probably will be the fastest:
fid = fopen('data.txt');
header = textscan(fid,'%s',3); % Optionally save header names
C = textscan(fid,'%s%d%s','HeaderLines',1); % Read data skipping header
fclose(fid); % Don't forget to close file
C{:}
Found a way to solve my problem.
Because I don't have the latest version of MATLAB and cannot use readable which would be the preferred option I ended up doing using textread and specifying the format of each column.
Tedious but maybe the "simplest" way I could find:
[picFile subCode gender]=textread('data.txt', '%s %f %s', 'headerlines',1);
T=[picFile(:) subCode(:) gender(:)]
The textscan solution by #horchler seems pretty similar. Thanks!

How to I give input through a file in MATLAB?

I have a data file having 50 2-D data points written in Notepad. I want to use it in clustering algorithm to cluster these 50 points. How can I import this file? Is there any other way to use it in program?
You can save the data as a .csv file or you can save it to an excel spreadsheet and use xlsread(). See here for more info: http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/xlsread.html
For the .csv case, this post should prove helpful: Fastest way to import CSV files in MATLAB
Imagine you had the following data:
X = [randn(100,2)-1 ; randn(100,2)];
save data.mat X
Then its as simple as doing:
%# load data from MAT-file
load data.mat
%# cluster into K=2 clusters
C = kmeans(X,2);
%# show cluster assignment
gscatter(X(:,1), X(:,2), C)
It depends how you have formatted the data file. You say it is saved on notepad but that is not too helpful. Depending on what you have used as the data delimiter you can import the datafile into an array using the dlmread function. For example if your file is called filename.dat and have used a ; character to separate each data item within this file you could read the data into a matrix A using
A = dlmread("filename.dat",';');
I would suggest reading the help documentation on the dlmread function in matlab.

How to read text fields into MATLAB and create a single matrix

I have a huge CSV file that has a mix of numerical and text datatypes. I want to read this into a single matrix in Matlab. I'll use a simpler example here to illustrate my problem. Let's say I have this CSV file:
1,foo
2,bar
I am trying to read this into MatLab using:
A=fopen('filename.csv');
B=textscan(A,'%d %d', 'delimiter',',');
C=cell2mat(B);
The first two lines work fine, but the problem is that texscan doesn't create a 2x2 matrix; instead it creates a 1x2 matrix with each value being an array. So I try to use the last line to combine the arrays into one big matrix, but it generates an error because the arrays have different datatypes.
Is there a way to get around this problem? Or a better way to combine the arrays?
I am note sure if combining them is a good idea. It is likely that you would be better off with them separate.
I changed your code, so that it works better:
clear
clc
A=fopen('filename.csv');
B=textscan(A,'%d %s', 'delimiter',',')
fclose(A)
Looking at the results
K>> B{1}
ans =
1
2
K>> B{2}
ans =
'foo'
'bar'
Really, I think this is the format that is most useful. If anything, most people would want to break this cell array into smaller chunks
num = B{1}
txt = B{2}
Why are your trying to combine them? They are already together in a cell array, and that is the most combined you are going to get.
There is a natural solution to this, but it requires the Statistics toolbox (version 6.0 or higher). Mixed data types can be read into a dataset array. See the Mathworks help page here.
I believe you can't use textscan for this purpose. I'd use fscanf which always gives you a matrix as specified. If you don't know the layout of the data it gets kind of tricky however.
fscanf works as follows:
fscanf(fid, format, size)
where fid is the fid generated by the fopen
format is the file format & how you are reading the data (['%d' ',' '%s'] would work for your example file)
size is the matrix dimensions ([2 2] would work on your example file).