read specific column of text file using Matlab

My text file looks like the following text:

     69.600000,       56.500000,    19991101,           0,       16.000000,           1,           5,3GGXC6,UCTP,         792,,      69.4139,      56.5321,       20725.632,              26267346,      7.33496,/Net/tholia/qscat/data/nc_test_daily/1999/qs_l2b_1999305.nc,         935,      71

It is the first line of my text file. The rest of lines of the text file has same format I'm trying to read specific column of this text file by using Matlab, but it contains number and string.So How to get certain column of this text file? Need some help to solve this problem. Thanks

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

If all the rows of your file are of the same format, the textscan function could probably read it. You would use the ‘format specification’ to choose the column to read.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

colpos = 42;  %starting column example
colwid = 7;   %column width example
regpat = sprintf('^(?:.{%d}).{%d}', colpos-1, colwid);

filestr = fileread('YourTextFile.txt');  %read file into string

colcontents = regexp(filestr, regpat, 'match', 'lineanchors');

colcontents will now be a cell array of strings, one per entry per line, containing whatever characters were in those columns. If appropriate you can process the cell array further such as by using str2double(colcontents) if you want to interpret them as numbers.