Read in Text File as string Array

Hello, I have a text file that contains one column of words. I would like to read in the file as a string array of seperated strings so I can index the elements in the array.

Any advice is greatly appecraiated! Thanks!

[xRobot]

Using this, I obtained data as a 1x1 cell in the workspace.

fid = fopen('mylist2.txt');

data = textscan(fid,'%s');

fclose(fid);

Using this, I obtained words5 as a 1x111022 char array in the workspace.

fileID = fopen('mylist.odt','r');

formatSpec = '%s';

words5 = fscanf(fileID,formatSpec);

[Ruger28]

Please see my answer below to see how to use textscan and get strings

Answer 1

[Ruger28]

fileName = '<your full file path here>'
% my sample text contains ---> apple, baseball, car, donut, & elephant in single column.
FID = fopen(fileName);
data = textscan(FID,'%s');
fclose(FID);
stringData = string(data{:});

Output:

stringData = 

  5×1 string array

    "apple"
    "baseball"
    "car"
    "donut"
    "elephant"

[xRobot]

Your provided solution works great Ruger28. With that said, I am now tring to extract a random word from the string array using,

word = stringData(randi(numel(stringData)));

But I am getting "word" in the workspace as a string with many strange characters and combos of symbols.

It may be worth noting that my document is a .odt(open text document from MS) this was the only way to get it to stay in a column.

[Ruger28]

hmm..I am not sure about the .odt files. The snippet of code works fine for me and throws the words out randomly. Have you tried replacing "string" with "char"?

[Ruger28]

What version of MATLAB are you running?

[xRobot]

R2019a

[xRobot]

I got it! I just had to copy and paste the column into notepad as a regular .txt file. Thank you so much!

[Ruger28]

not a problem! try this just for fun.

odtFile = '<full filepath for file';
txtFile = fullfile(fileparts(odtFile),'TextVersion.txt');
copyfile(odtFile,txtFile);
fileName = txtFile;
...
...
<your script>

and then try runing your code. That way, you wont have to copy paste.