uigetfile and getting Matrix from .txt file

Hey guys,

I got a .txt Data and in my GUI I insert this file with a buttonclick. What is missing is, that the values are being displayed or saved in a Matrix (and in the next step, that another .txt file add their values in new rows into the same Matrix.)

What I already got (and think it works :D)

     function get_file_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)

        [filename1, pathname,d] = uigetfile( ...
            {'*.txt;',...
             '.txt-Dateien (*.txt)';
             '*.*',  'All Files (*.*)'}, ...
             'Wähle weise');
        fid = fopen(fullfile(pathname,filename1),'r');

Now comes my tricky part. Where I got my problem

   fid_input = textscan(fid, '%f%s%s%f%f%s','HeaderLines',2);

When I try to read fid_input I get

 fid_input =

Columns 1 through 5

[4x1 double] {4x1 cell} {4x1 cell} [4x1 double] [4x1 double]

Column 6

{4x1 cell}

So somehow I guess it is right (my test file is 4x6), but are the values really in that Matrix? How can I have a look at the real Matrix? Where did I go wrong?

Thanks for helping.

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Yes, your output is correct given the format string that you have provided to the textscan function. From http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/textscan.html, C = textscan(fileID,formatSpec) reads data from an open text file into cell array, C.

The values from your text file are in that matrix, and you did not do anything wrong.

fid_input is the cell array, with each element corresponding to a column of data from your file. The cell arrays within fid_input correspond to the string columns (as given by %s in your format string).

To access the first column of data, just type

 fid_input{1}

and that will return the 4x1 vector of doubles. To get the second column of string data, just type

 fid_input{2}

[Micha]

Hey Geoff, I already changed it to a dlmread, and somehow that worked better with what I wrote afterwards... Thank you very much, yours works too and now I think I understand it a bit more.

[Geoff Hayes]

Awesome!