How to create structs with text data

I am struggling to find a way to separate the cells I created from the data I read in into an ordered structured based on the parent string

i.e. want data = {"couple1:" , " child1:" , " grandchild1: 3",....}

into couple1.child1.grandchild1 = 3

I thought of using isspace to determine if the cell has spaces or not and sum from there to check the previous cell, but it sounds memory expensive if my text files is much bigger.

Thanks!

fid = open('exampledata.txt')

Error using open
Failed to open MATLAB Editor.

tline = fgetl(fid);
data = cell(0,1);
while ischar(tline)
    data{end+1,1} = tline;
    tline = fgetl(fid);
end
fclose(fid);

[Rik]

Why do you want that structure? It seems very difficult to work with the data once it is inside that data structure.

Answer 1

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

check my demo code below :

clc
clearvars

mylines = readlines('exampledata.txt'); %
[m,n] = size(mylines);

% grouping all variables under an overarching struct
 S = struct() ;
 
 for ck = 1 : m
     tmp = char(mylines(ck));
     
     % empty default numeric values
     lev1_num = [];
     lev2_num = [];
     lev3_num = [];
     
     if length(tmp)>0
         nb_of_leading_spaces = max(find(isspace(tmp(1:min(length(tmp),9))))); % assuming here no more than 9 leading spaces are used (adjust)
        
         %% level 1 (couple)
         if isempty(nb_of_leading_spaces) % check no space characters in the 3 first positions
             ind = strfind(tmp,':');
             lev1 = tmp(1:ind-1)
             S.(lev1) = lev1_num;
         end
         
         %% level 2 (child)
         if nb_of_leading_spaces == 3 % check no space characters in the 3 first positions
             ind = strfind(tmp,':');
             lev2 = tmp(1:ind-1);
             lev2 = strtrim(lev2); % remove leading spaces
             % check if data after ':' is numeric
             lev2_num = tmp(ind+1:end);
             if ~isempty(lev2_num)
                 lev2_num = str2num(lev2_num)
             end
             S.(lev1).(lev2) = lev2_num;
         end
         
         %% level 3 (grandchild)
         if nb_of_leading_spaces == 6 % check no space characters in the 3 first positions
             ind = strfind(tmp,':');
             lev3 = tmp(1:ind-1)
             lev3 = strtrim(lev3); % remove leading spaces
           % check if data after ':' is numeric
             lev3_num = tmp(ind+1:end);
             if ~isempty(lev3_num)
                 lev3_num = str2num(lev3_num)
             end
             S.(lev1).(lev2).(lev3) = lev3_num;
         end         
         
     end
    
 end

[Rik]

You can probably make the depth dynamic by using the setfield function.

[Rik]

Deleting your answer and reposting as comment is not what I meant. Go to https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/discussions and see which category fits best.

Although, to be honest, I don't understand why you don't put this in a Word document on your own computer. What is the actual benefit to others of this wall of text?