Read data from .dat file

Hey,

I am trying to read some data from a .dat file, by using the textscan function. The Problem is, that MATLAB outputs me a cell array where the cells contain the whole column of my data and I am not able to adress each element individually, which I will need for further evaluation. Sb knows what I am missing here?

Merry Christmans

Code and files:

datacell = textscan(fid, '%u %u %f64 %f64 %f64','HeaderLines', 1);

Data File:

% track#   exppar1[Hz]   lcut[dB HL]   mlow[CU/dB]   mhigh[CU/dB]

1   250.00000000   54.22407002   0.40618241   0.88538138

2   500.00000000   65.67426102   0.35505814   1.03196552

3   1000.00000000   68.89377754   0.33789152   1.14795756

4   2000.00000000   59.92227307   0.36044833   0.99198012

5   4000.00000000   63.79115269   0.39970735   3.14824276

6   6000.00000000   56.08308046   0.46312449   1.20653864

output of datacell{1} 

ans =

             1
             2
             3
             4
             5
             6

Answer 1

[Kirby Fears]

You've given textscan directions to read 5 columns where the first two are %u (integers) and the next three are %f64 (doubles). Considering that you are specifying data types per column, Matlab has to give you each column separately. It's standard to put the columns together into a cell array.

You can access row 5 of column 1 by indexing twice as follows:

datacell{1}(5)
ans = 
      5

Does this solve your problem? What else are you trying to do with the data?

[Walter Roberson]

MATLAB always leaves the columns separate for textscan() unless you specify the CollectOutput option.

[Kirby Fears]

Enabling CollectOutput with columns of different datatypes will be even more confusing to work with. It would put the first 2 columns into datacell{1} and the next 3 into datacell{2}.

[Kirby Fears]

If you're willing to make each column the same datatype, you can read your data into a double array as follows:

dataArray = textscan(fid, '%n %n %n %n %n',...
    'HeaderLines', 1,'CollectOutput',true);
dataArray = dataArray{1};

[Elduderino]

Thanks was exactly what I was looking for, and didn't expect this cell array + 'regular array' syntax.

I guess I am just going to make some graphs, standard deviation and maybe look for correlation. Nothing fancy :)

Thanks again and a merry Christmas you all!