reading a text file to MATLAB with different forma

Question

I have a text file, but unfortunately its been poorly formatted, however i want to read the content of the text file into a a matrix, but I don't know how to do that.

When try to use fscanf, textscan, textread and the rest it just copies everything into one cell, but i don't want it that way.

This how the content looks like: so i want to read only the decimals not the absolute figures. Can someone help me.

 1 : 13.27 ;  3 : 20.68 ;  6 : 8.271 ;  7 : 3.308 ;  8 : 8.328 ; 
 9 : 6.655 ;  10 : 16.58 ;  11 : 9.925 ;  12 : 12.41 ;  13 : 4.135 ; 
 14 : 9.925 ;  15 : 11.58 ;  16 : 10.87 ;  17 : 1.654 ;  18 : 4.962 ; 
 19 : 6.655 ;  22 : 10.98 ;  23 : 24.25 ;  24 : 47.33 ;  25 : 11.6 ; 
 26 : 9.925 ;  27 : 5.809 ;  28 : 5.001 ;  29 : 6.617 ;  30 : 7.577 ; 
 31 : 9.155 ;  32 : 7.444 ;  33 : 28.58 ;  34 : 9.155 ;  35 : 35.83 ; 

Answer 1

I assume that the colon (:) seperates values in a row and the semicolon (;) is separating rows. With this assumption the following function should read your data into a MATLAB matrix

function dat = readData(filename)
% FUNCTION dat = readData(filename)
% Reads data from a nonstandard formatted file, filename
% INPUTS:
%    filename:  Full path to data file with the following format
%                      1 : 2; 3 : 4
%               where the : separates values in a row and ; separates rows

% open the file for reading
fid = fopen(filename);

ii=0; % row index

while ~feof(fid) % loop until we find the end of the file
    str = fgetl(fid); % get a line of text

    while 1
        % split the string into its component parts
        % assume that values are split with colon ":" and
        % rows are identified with a
        % semicolon ";".
        % 
        % split at the first row using strtok
        [rowStr rem]=strtok(str,';');

        % split rowStr using colon
        [str1,str2]=strtok(rowStr,':');

        % get rid of the colon in str2
        str2 = strrep(str2,':',' ');

        str1 =strtrim(str1);
        str2 =strtrim(str2);

        % store data if we found any
        if ~isempty(str1)&& ~ isempty(str2)
            ii=ii+1; % increment row index
            dat(ii,:) = [str2double(str1) str2double(str2)];
        end

        if isempty(rem), break; end
        str = rem(2:end);
    end
end
fclose(fid);

You can than use the functions round, floor, ceil to extract the 'decimal values'.

Answer 2

Just using textscan and ignoring the things you don't need, like the numbers and : gives you quite a simple solution:

fid = fopen('test.txt', 'rt');
data = textscan(fid, '%*u %*1s %f', 'Delimiter', ';');
fclose(fid);

Change test.txt to your filename. data is a cell with your doubles in it.

>> data{:}

ans =

   13.2700
   20.6800
    8.2710
    3.3080
    8.3280
    6.6550
   16.5800
    9.9250
   12.4100
    4.1350
    9.9250
   11.5800
   10.8700
    1.6540
    4.9620
    6.6550
   10.9800
   24.2500
   47.3300
   11.6000
    9.9250
    5.8090
    5.0010
    6.6170
    7.5770
    9.1550
    7.4440
   28.5800
    9.1550
   35.8300

Answer 3

conceptually:

take the string.

Change : and ; with spaces and \n (return) with ;

Assign the string to a variable, the variable should become a matrix.

With a dual loop change the value of each elemnt with

var(i,j)=floor(var(i,j)) - var(i,j);

Here you are (If I didn't misunderstood you).