How to use readtable function with delimiter value.

I have uploaded a 35 mb text file into matlab using readtable function.It was supposed to be a 50118*100 matrix. But it becoming 50118*1 where all collumn values are copied into a single cell. i have used a delimiter code

   readtable('nnn.txt', 'Delimiter','space');

but it doesnt solve the eissue. i am attaching a snapshot for reference. kindly help.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

It looks to me as if there are no spaces between the elements, that the entries are fixed width. I cannot tell whether the "-" are intended as separators or if they are indicating negative values. I cannot tell if all of the values are negative.

My guess at the moment is that you might be able to use 'Delimiter', '-' and then throw away the empty first column (proceeding the first "delimiter" of '-'), and then multiply the entries all by -1. However that is conditional on there being no positive entries.

More generally you might need

numcol = 100;
fmt = repmat('%6c', 1, numcol);

fid = fopen('nnn.txt', 'rt');
datacell = textscan(fid, fmt);
fclose(fid);

data = cellfun(@(C) str2double(cellstr(C)), datacell, 'Uniform', 0);

and then use something that converts the cell array into table().

Note: When you use a %c format, textscan() outputs a character array for that location, rather than a cell array of strings such as would be used for %s. str2double() will not work on character arrays which is why I call cellstr() to convert it to something str2double() can handle.