how to read complicated text file

Hello,

How to read the following "complicated" text file via textscan?

see attached file.dat:

name | multiplicity | pos | rot | excore

------------------------------------------------

a | 2 | 2 3 | 1 | 1

b | 1 | 1 2 3 | 6 | 1

c | 2 | 1 | 6 | 0

...

------------------------------------------------

The number of rows is uknown. The number of integers at column "pos" is variable.

Answer 1

[Simon]

try this

% read file with 5 columns and delimiter '|'
fid = fopen('readin.txt');
FC = textscan(fid, '%s %s %s %s %s', 'delimiter', '|');
fclose(fid);

% postprocessing
% remove blanks from string column
FC(1) = strtrim(FC(1));
% convert numeric columns
for n = 2:5
    FC{n} = cellfun(@(x) str2num(x), FC{n}, 'UniformOutput', false);
end

name = FC{1};
multiplicity = cell2mat(FC{2});
pos = FC{3};
rot = cell2mat(FC{4});
excore = cell2mat(FC{5});

[Michal Kvasnicka]

Great! Thanks Simon

[Michal Kvasnicka]

Could be possible to create output variables names from 1st row of text file, too?

[Simon]

If the first row is always the header, no problem:

% read file with 5 columns and delimiter '|'
fid = fopen('readin.txt');
FC = textscan(fid, '%s %s %s %s %s', 'delimiter', '|');
fclose(fid);

% get header
Header = cellfun(@(x) x(1), FC);
% remove header from file contents
FC = cellfun(@(x) x(2:end), FC, 'UniformOutput', false);

% postprocessing
% remove blanks from string column
FC(1) = strtrim(FC(1));
% convert numeric columns
for n = 2:5
    FC{n} = cellfun(@(x) str2num(x), FC{n}, 'UniformOutput', false);
end

F1 = FC{1};
F2 = cell2mat(FC{2});
F3 = FC{3};
F4 = cell2mat(FC{4});
F5 = cell2mat(FC{5});

for n = 1:5
    eval(sprintf('%s = F%d;', Header{n}, n));
    clear(sprintf('F%d', n));
end

Answer 2

[ES]

use textscan with delimiter '|'

FileObj=fopen(FileName);
CellData=textscan(FileObj, ...
    '%s %s %s %s %s %s %s %s %s', 'delimiter', '|');

[Michal Kvasnicka]

The number of rows is uknown!!! So, number of "%s" is not possible to set in advance.

Answer 3

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Use fgetl to read your file then parse the result

fid = fopen('file.txt');
line1 = fgetl(fid);
res={line1};
while ischar(line1)
  line1 = fgetl(fid);
  res{end+1} =line1
end
fclose(fid);
res(end)=[]

[Michal Kvasnicka]

Thanks, but the parsing of res cell in this method is very painfull :) So, what I neeed is exactly as follows:

after reading the file I need the following outputs:

name = {'a','b','c'}

multiplicity = [2 1 2]

pos = {[2 3], [1 2 3], [1]}

rot = [1 6 6]

excore = [1 1 0 ]