string inside a table

hi guys:

i export csv files from an url by using urlwrite and readtable commands. the resulting table is (or should be) composed of numbers, somehow some table cells has the value '-'. Because of this, the whole column containing that string '-' become into string values, like this:

   column1     column2
   -------     -------
   '12'        34
   '10'        12
   '-'         20
   '1.1'       13.1
   '34.9'      66

is there a way to avoid it? i mean, the whole table as numbers...

thanks

[Jan]

Before we can suggest, how to solve this, we need to know, what you want to appear instead of the '-'. Is NaN okay?

[Walter Roberson]

Is it possible that the original data contained "- 20" with a space between the "-" and the "20" ?

[eric capnu]

NaN would be a nice choose. And no, it is just '-'.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

YourTable.column1 = str2double(YourTable.column1);

Answer 2

[Jeremy Hughes]

Try:

>> T = readtable(filename,'TreatAsEmpty',{'-'})

Jeremy