Multi tool use

Reading rows of data till its end

I am trying to read the data in column2 until the row ends. I don't know the number of rows of data, but it is finite ( < 100). The columns are space separated:

column2

header line 1
header line 2
header line 3
column1 column2
1 2
3 5
5 7
7 9
. .
. .
. .

header line 4
header line 5


I tried the following code. It works if there are no further header lines:

mydata = dlmread('data.txt', '', 4, 1)


How does it work with further header lines after the data rows as shown above ends?

2 Answers
2

An easier solution is to use textscan to read your file. You can specify the number of header lines as an extra argument to the function call. The additional lines at the end of your file are ignored by the function when you specify the correct conversion specifier.

fileID = fopen('data.txt');
mydata = textscan(fileID,'%d%d','HeaderLines',4);
fclose(fileID);


mydata{2} contains data from column 2.

An easy approach is reading the file in string format, removing the lines, and writing to the new file.

% Read the file
fid = fopen(filePath,'r');
str = textscan(fid,'%s','Delimiter','n');
fclose(fid);

% Extract number lines
str2 = str{1}(5:end-2);

% Save as a text file
fid2 = fopen('new.txt','w');
fprintf(fid2,'%sn', str2{:});
fclose(fid2);

mydata = dlmread('new.txt','',0,1);


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