Write ".m" matlab code files to excel

Hi, I have currently designed a simulation tool on matlab which uses a .m input file. The file basically contains parameters and data required for simulation. The results generated are then written to excel file. What I was wondering is if it is possible to write this input file , which is a ".m" code file to excel? basically copy the contents of this m file as is and paste it to excel. Is there a functon or command I could use to do this?

Thank You In Advance

Answer 1

[Dana]

A few things. First of all, I want to double-check that the file you're talking about is indeed an .m file. .m files are MATLAB scripts/functions, i.e., files which contain instructions telling MATLAB to do things. .mat files, meanwhile, are files used to store MATLAB data.

If indeed it's the case that you're storing data/parameters in an .m file, then step 1 is to save that information properly to a .mat file, and step 2 is to never store data/parameters in an .m file ever again. To do step 1, load up all that info into MATLAB variables in your workspace, and then use the save command to save it to a .mat file. From then on, you just need to use the load command to load up that data in MATLAB. Step 2, meanwhile, is self-explanatory.

Now, assuming you've got your data in a .mat file, to convert to an Excel file, you'll want to read up on xlswrite.

Finally, if you literally want the text in an .m file to be copied to an Excel file, the easiest thing would be to literally just open the .m file in the editor, highlight what you want, copy, and then paste in Excel. I can't really see why you'd ever want to do something like that, but hey, stranger things have happened I guess.

[Glen Rodrigues]

Hi Dana, I am not using .m file to store any information. As I mentioned in my question before it is an input file which includes instructions for the simulations, these instructions are in the form of variable assignments , such as a=100, warning on etc and some array. What I am trying to do is write this .m code file to another file such as excel or .txt so that people without Matlab can open the file and see the input data

[Glen Rodrigues]

For eg let's say that my input file is "input.m" randomly placed within the main script. I want Matlab to find this specific file and make a copy of it in excel or .txt

[Dana]

Ah, okay, I see. .m files are actually plain text files already. So all you have to do is make a copy of the .m file and then change the file extension to .txt. Then you can open it with Notepad or whatever other plain text editor you like.

[Glen Rodrigues]

Yep but what I am trying to see if Matlab can do this automatically. Every time a simulation is run the user edits the input file according to the simulation requirements. The simulation results are stored into different sheets in an excel file, so I am trying to write a copy of the input file to a sheet in excel. Can this be done automatically? Write now I am doing it manually, but I was wondering if I could code it in Matlab to copy the contents of input file to excel

[Dana]

This is much easier converting to a .txt file than an Excel file. Excel files, like .mat files, are best for storing data, but you're talking about storing lines of code from an .m file, which is properly interpreted as text.

So here's what you could do:

mfilename = 'input.m'; % name of .m file you want to copy
txtfilename = 'input.txt'; % name for the .txt file you'll create (WITH FILE EXTENSION)
copyfile(mfilename,txtfilename); % tell MATLAB to copy the .m file 'mfilename'
                                % and name it 'txtfilename'

Now you have a copy of the .m file, but saved as a plain text file.

[Glen Rodrigues]

Yep, even I was thinking the same. Was just going through the support page for copyfile command and like you said sounds more reasonable to convert to text file rather than excel.

Thank you :)