Read data from a tricky text file

Dear all,

I would like to read numeric data from a file which has the following standard format:

1  (15, 16, 266, 251)
2  (16, 17, 267, 266)
3  (17, 18, 268, 267)
4  (18, 19, 269, 268)
5  (19, 20, 270, 269)
6  (20, 21, 271, 270)
7  (21, 22, 272, 271)
8  (22, 23, 273, 272)
9  (23, 24, 274, 273)

The data is tab separated and number of rows arbitrary. I would like to end up with a variable containing the values of the left-most column, and the data in the parentheses should be treated as a single vector per row.

e.g.:

>> data{1}
  {[1]}, {[15, 16, 266, 251]}

>> data{2}
  {[2]}, {[16, 17, 267, 266]}

As long as I can access the the data as two numeric columns, I'd be happy!

I have tried importdata(), dlmread() and fget methods. They all seem to return each row of data as a cell of characters.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Best regards,

Louis

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Assuming "data in the parentheses" all have equal length. Why cell array? Isn't this good enough?

fid = fopen( 'cssm.txt' );
cac = textscan( fid, '%f%f%f%f%f', 'Delimiter', {'\t',','}  ...
            ,   'Whitespace',' ()', 'CollectOutput',true    );
fclose( fid );
num = cac{:};

>> num
num =
     1    15    16   266   251
     2    16    17   267   266
     3    17    18   268   267
     4    18    19   269   268
     5    19    20   270   269
     6    20    21   271   270
     7    21    22   272   271
     8    22    23   273   272
     9    23    24   274   273

>> num(2,2:end)
ans =
    16    17   267   266

where cssm.txt contains the data of your question.

[fsgeek]

No need for cell arrays, that was just a demo. This method works great, thanks!