How to extract numbers from .dat file

Hello everyone,

I have a problem on how to open and extract from .dat files.The .dat files are like these

DEAD LOAD: 28.75

USEFULL LOAD: 10

SPANS: 2.0 1.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

and those numbers i want tο be put into some new variables which DEAD LOAD will be (q), USEFULL LOAD will be (g), SPANS will be (Li).Please if someone has an idea reply.

Thank you all for your time!

[David Hill]

Attach a sample .dat file or try:

a=readcell('yourfile.dat');

and see what it looks like. Then extract the data you want from the cell, indexing appropriately.

[Mathieu NOE]

hi

test also this variant :

a=readcell('data.dat',"Delimiter",":");

[Nasis Vangelis]

Thank you about your replies gyus,both of them are working my only problem is how i can put the numeric part of the .dat file in variables.This is what the .dat file looks like.Also i want to ask if i can use the dlmread to solve my prolem.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

One option:

fidi = fopen('Nasis Vangelis.dat','rt');
k = 1;
while ~feof(fidi)
    readline = fgetl(fidi);
    C{k} = regexp(readline, '(\w*\s\w*\:)|(\w*\:)|(\d*\.*\d*)', 'match');
    k = k+1;
end
fclose(fidi);

with:

C{1}
C{2}
C{3}

producing:

ans =

  1×2 cell array

    {'DEAD LOAD:'}    {'28.75'}


ans =

  1×2 cell array

    {'USEFULL LOAD:'}    {'10'}


ans =

  1×6 cell array

    {'SPANS:'}    {'2.0'}    {'1.0'}    {'3.0'}    {'4.0'}    {'5.0'}

The file (renamed ‘Nasis Vangelis.txt’ since ‘.dat’ files are not permitted) is attached.

Answer 2

[Mathieu NOE]

hi again

these are 3 options I tested for you ; i believe the second one is what you are looking for

a=readcell('data.dat',"Delimiter",":");

% % option 1 : create a structure : 
% for ci = 1:size(a,1)
%     Varnames{ci} = matlab.lang.makeValidName(a{ci,1});
%     myStruct.(Varnames{ci}) = a{ci,2};
% end

% option 2 using assignin (in function variableCreator) : 
for ci = 1:size(a,1)
    % change blanks in varaible names to underscore (otherwise
    % variableCreator will throw an error mesage
    str = strrep(a{ci,1}, ' ', '_');
    val = a{ci,2};
    if ischar(val)
        val = str2num(val);
    end
    variableCreator ( str, val )
    
end

% option 3 creating a table - one line engine !  

% T = array2table(a)

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

 function variableCreator ( newVar, variable )
   assignin ( 'caller', newVar, variable );
 end