Read .txt file with dots in filename

Hi,

I have a set of files named "xx_xx_32.5_xx_6.0_xx.txt" which I would need to read in to process with Matlab. The numbers are always changing and denote parameters of the experiment. Is there any way to read the file and import the data into Matlab, ignoring all the dots before ".txt"?

All my current tries using for example "load" or "readmatrix" failed since Matlab always assumes everything after the first dot to be the file extension.

Thanks!

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

I have no trouble reading such a filename (tested here on R2024 and on my PC with R2020b) - which release are you using ?

a = readmatrix('xx_xx_32.5_xx_6.0_xx.txt')

a = 2×4

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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[Mathieu NOE]

maybe there is another issue (not the filename itself) - so could you share your code and one file ?

[Florian]

Hi,

thanks there was indeed an issue with the testfile and I got it solved now!

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

"All my current tries using for example "load" or "readmatrix" failed since Matlab always assumes everything after the first dot to be the file extension."

It works correctly here, with absolutely no special options or settings required:

F = "xx_xx_32.5_xx_6.0_xx.txt";
writematrix(rand(3,5), F)

M = readmatrix(F)

M = 3×5

0.6715 0.4446 0.2202 0.6635 0.4359 0.1113 0.4803 0.3495 0.8802 0.2290 0.3527 0.4785 0.8508 0.2626 0.8446

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You could also specify the filetype:

M = readmatrix(F, 'Filetype','delimitedtext')

M = 3×5

0.6715 0.4446 0.2202 0.6635 0.4359 0.1113 0.4803 0.3495 0.8802 0.2290 0.3527 0.4785 0.8508 0.2626 0.8446

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I very much doubt that MATLAB "assumes everything after the first dot to be the file extension" because this would be completely inconsistent with the behavior of FILEPARTS, which is the function that MATLAB uses to identify the filename and file extension:

[~,N,X] = fileparts(F)

N = "xx_xx_32.5_xx_6.0_xx"

X = ".txt"

But without you providing any code or showing us any working examples of what you claim then we have to rely on the MATLAB documentation and functions, which as I showed here clearly do work as expected.

[Florian]

Hi,

thanks for your detailed answer. I don't know how it happened or when but apparently the first file to read in got corrupted during my tries and I did not notice until now - I got it to work with the others now as well and understand Matlabs file read-in much better now!

Thanks!

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

projectdir = '.';     %directory that contains the data
dinfo = dir(fullfile(projectdir, 'xx*.txt'));
filenames = fullfile({dinfo.folder}, {dinfo.name});
numfiles = numel(filenames);
data = cell(numfiles, 1);
for K = 1 : numfiles
    FILENAME = filenames{K};
    data{K} = readmatrix(FILENAME, 'filetype', 'text');
end