Readtable Returns "NaN" to the string type value if one column contains both number type and string type values

Hi, I have a quesiton regarding Matlab readtable commend

For example, I created a table on csv file as below, which one column includes number-type value at the first row and the string-type value at the second row.

Then I use readtable to read this csv file. It returns "NaN" to all string type value, as below. Therefore, I lost the information of the string-type data.

Can someone help me to resove this issue so I can read both number-type data and string-type data? I am currently using Matlab2023a.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Use READCELL:

C = readcell('test.csv')

C = 3×4 cell array
    {'value0' }    {'value1' }    {'value2' }    {'value3' }
    {[      1]}    {[      2]}    {[      3]}    {[      4]}
    {'gfedcba'}    {'gfedcba'}    {'gfedcba'}    {'gfedcba'}

Everything that is text is text, everything that is numeric is numeric. Easy.

[Zhao Yuan]

Thank you for support!

Answer 2

[Dyuman Joshi]

Each variable/column of a table is expected to be a homogenous array. The first value read in each column is a numeric value, and the rest of the values are not. Thus they are treated as Not a Number.

You can either

> Read all data as strings

or

> Use readcell and (if you want to,) convert to table via cell2table

[Zhao Yuan]

I chose the readcell for a solution. Thank you for support!