Simple answer below, and a more complete function in comment #3. Code is attached to the comment.
You can use a REGEXP to split blocks/sections, and then post-process each block of data:
content = fileread( 'myFile.in' ) ;
content = regexprep( content, '!.*?\r?\n', '' ) ;
blocks = regexp( content, '&(?<name>[^\n\r]+)(?<data>.+?)/', 'names' ) ;
This creates a struct array blocks with the following type of content:
>> blocks(1)
ans =
name: 'NEWRUN'
data: [1x266 char]
>> blocks(2)
ans =
name: 'SCAN'
data: [1x496 char]
where the field data stores the content of the section as a raw, unprocessed character array. Post-processing seems to be a bit section specific, but here is an example:
for bId = 1 : numel( blocks )
blocks(bId).parsed = regexp( blocks(bId).data, ...
'([^=\s,]+)\s*=\s*''?([^\s,\n\r'']+)', ...
'tokens' ) ;
end
which builds a new field named parsed for each block (you could overwrite blocks(bId).data with parsed data actually, to spare memory, but I kept both at this point for debugging). For example:
>> blocks(1)
ans =
name: 'NEWRUN'
data: [1x266 char]
parsed: {1x15 cell}
shows that 15 parameters were parsed (without commented lines) in block/section 1. Parsed parameters are stored in pairs name/value: ..
>> blocks(1).parsed{1}
ans =
'Version' '3'
>> blocks(1).parsed{4}
ans =
'Distribution' 'IAC_LASER_1p5ps70mmRISE5000.ini'
>> blocks(1).parsed{5}
ans =
'Xoff' '0.0'
This approach holds in ~6 lines of code, which is interesting for such a complex file. However, you have to be familiar enough with regular expressions for fine tuning the mechanism.
The second approach is simply to read the file line by line and build whatever structure or cell array of parameters you need. For example:
sections = {} ;
sId = 0 ;
fid = fopen( 'myFile.in', 'r' ) ;
while ~feof( fid )
line = strtrim( fgetl( fid )) ;
if isempty( line ), continue ; end
if line(1) == '!', continue ; end
if line(1) == '&'
sId = sId + 1 ;
sections{sId}.name = line(2:end) ;
sections{sId}.data = {} ;
elseif line(1) ~= '/'
sections{sId}.data = [sections{sId}.data; {line}] ;
end
end
fclose( fid ) ;
This is simple, but there would still be some post processing..
>> sections{1}
ans =
name: 'NEWRUN'
data: {11x1 cell}
>> sections{1}.data
ans =
'Version=3'
'Head= 'IAC 44 MeV LINAC''
'RUN=1,'
'Distribution = 'IAC_LASER_1p5ps70mmRISE5000.ini', Xoff=0.0, Yoff=0.0'
'XYrms=0.6900'
'TRACK_ALL=T, PHASE_SCAN=F, AUTO_PHASE=.T'
'Lmonitor=.F'
'check_ref_part=.F'
'H_max=0.001'
'H_min=0.000'
'debunch=0.0'
