How can I read a text file and import a part of it into matlab.

I have a text file with 13 columns and some 900 rows. But,column 9 to 12 are asterisk and 13th is again numeric.I want to import only the numerics from 1st row to 38th row and 1st column to 8th column.Please help.

[Stephen23]

@Bibhu Das: please edit your question and upload the file by clicking the paperclip button.

Answer 1

[dpb]

fmt=[repmat('%f',1,8) %*[^\n]'];  % 8 values, skip rest of line format string
fid=fopen('yourfilenamehere');    % open the file; return file handle
data=cell2mat(textscan(fid,fmt,38,'collectoutput',1)); % read; repeat format 38 times
fid=fclose(fid);                  % close file
% do whatever w/ data here...

NB: I went ahead and wrapped the textscan call in cell2mat to return a double array. I assumed delimiter one of the default; if something else you'll need to fixup to match.

See

doc textscan % for details, examples, etc., ...

Or, option B:

Use the data import tool from the User Interface that (I think) will let you select an area to import from the file...not sure how it will do with such a long file but presume it'll handle it.

Answer 2

[rocketboyjka]

Take a look at the the textscan() function. Something like this should work:

 numRows = 38; % Or however many you want
 fileID = fopen('MyFile.txt'); % Open the file
 myData = textscan(fileID,'%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %s %s %s %s %f',numRows); % Read the specified format
 fclose(fileID); % close the file
 myData = myData([1:8]); % get rid of the columns you don't want
 myData = cell2mat(myData); % Convert the cell array to a matrix