import data from the web?

Hi friends,

I'd like to import the data found here: http://geoid.colorado.edu/grace/data/data-30i5bio0a9vng04vriclc97976-0005.txt, but Matlab chokes on it. When I view the data in a web browser it looks like three nicely-formatted columns, but if I save it and open in Notepad, the formatting is not evident. Ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

[JPVersiani]

You can do the following: copy and paste from own browser, or save the file and use excel to open it. Open Excel and go to open, change the option to file for'' all files'' and choose the text file, then just define the columns of data and delete the text. Good luck!

[Chad Greene]

I was afraid of that. I'd prefer to remove the manual copy-paste-save steps if possible. If I hand my code off to a colleague, fewer steps are always better. Easier to learn and fewer places to introduce error. The simplest solution I have found is to save the .txt file as an .asc file, then import using importdata('gracedata.asc'). I'm open to other suggestions.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

You could always use urlread and then post process the string:

str = urlread('http://geoid.colorado.edu/grace/data/data-30i5bio0a9vng04vriclc97976-0005.txt');