[Reddit Cross Post] Reading XML data where commas are used as thousands and as separators

I need to extract the data of a lab equipment that only exports an XML file, so I'm trying to have a simple script to convert it to paired data or create a graph. The problem is: whenever the Y values go over 1000 it adds a comma separator. Using simple ',' splits won't work. What is the best approach for something like this? Why would they make it like that? ...

Hopefully it is simple to adjust (already tried the equipment side approach but can't make any modifications to the export file).

<XVALUES>6.9661,..........1.9950,1.9896,1.9845,1.9791,1.9741,1.9688,1.9632,1.9578,1.9523,1.9459,1.9376,1.9301,1.9233,1.9160,1.9086,1.9020,1.8952,1.8885,1.8820,1.8756,1.8693,1.8630,1.8569,1.8509,1.8446,1.8385,1.8327,1.8267,1.8209,1.8149</XVALUES>

<YVALUES>-10.19,.......11.17,14.56,18.45,...........,1,935.56,1,928.36,1,922.59,1,918.27,1,914.43,1,909.62,1,903.38,1,898.58,1,893.77,1,888.49,1,883.69,1,879.36,1,875.04,1,870.24,1,865.43,1,863.51,1,862.55,1,861.11,1,859.19,1,855.35,1,853.42,1,851.02,1,849.58,1,846.70,1,845.74,1,844.30,1,841.90,1,839.98,1,838.05,1,837.09,1,833.25,1,827.01,1,821.24,1,812.60,1,795.30,1,744.39,1,709.81,1,681.95,1,646.88,1,613.26,1,587.80,1,564.26,1,537.85,1,515.27,1,496.06,1,476.84,1,459.07,1,442.74,1,427.37,1,411.04,1,394.23,1,380.78,1,369.73,1,357.72,1,344.27</YVALUES>

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/matlab/comments/1o6efqo/reading_xml_data_where_commas_are_used_as/

Answer 1

[Josh Kahn]

data = readlines('data.xml');

yValues = cellfun(@double,regexp(data, '(?<YVALUE>\d*,?\d+.\d+)(?:,|<)', 'tokens'))

yValues =

1.0e+03 *

Columns 1 through 17

0.0102 0.0112 0.0146 0.0184 1.9356 1.9284 1.9226 1.9183 1.9144 1.9096 1.9034 1.8986 1.8938 1.8885 1.8837 1.8794 1.8750

Columns 18 through 34

1.8702 1.8654 1.8635 1.8625 1.8611 1.8592 1.8553 1.8534 1.8510 1.8496 1.8467 1.8457 1.8443 1.8419 1.8400 1.8380 1.8371

Columns 35 through 51

1.8333 1.8270 1.8212 1.8126 1.7953 1.7444 1.7098 1.6820 1.6469 1.6133 1.5878 1.5643 1.5378 1.5153 1.4961 1.4768 1.4591

Columns 52 through 59

1.4427 1.4274 1.4110 1.3942 1.3808 1.3697 1.3577 1.3443