using textscan

Is textscan the correct command to use when importing data from text files into matlab. The command seems to work fine if I only have a vector in the text file, but if I have a matrix, matlab will change the structure of the data and store the matrix as a vector. Which command should I use if I'm importing data from text files within a loop where some of the text files include vectors and others include matrices?

Answer 1

[Oleg Komarov]

You have to specify the right 'format', read example 8 to get an idea: http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/techdoc/ref/textscan.html

[Richard]

So, if I have say 4 .txt files in a folder where 2 are column vectors and the other 2 are matrices I would have to use textscan twice in order to obtain all of the values. By using:

fid = fopen('...');

a = textscan(fid,'%f');

It returns the text files which should be matrices as one long vector.

[Richard]

I've decided to use dlmread seeing as the .txt files do not have any headings.

[Oleg Komarov]

Headers do not matter, if you want 4 columns the right format is:

textscan(fid,'%f %f %f %f','Delimiter',''whateveryoulike')

or

textscan(fid,'%f',4,'Delimiter',''whateveryoulike')