Can I use MEMMAPFILE to access data stored in a delimited text file in MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)?

I have a delimited ASCII file which contains an array of data. I would like to access that array using a memory mapped file with the MEMMAPFILE function. Is there a way to access the actual data, and not the individual characters that make up the text file?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The ability to use MEMMAPFILE on delimited ASCII files to read in the actual data is not available in MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a).

MEMMAPFILE is designed to be a low level function to quickly access subsets of large binary data files. All modern operating systems provide this memory mapped file functionality, and MEMMAPFILE is designed to provide that functionality inside MATLAB.

The workaround is to read the file as characters (UINT8) and parse the resulting character array using normal string functions.