Read in, edit, write out

I am trying to read in a text file which contains text and not just values, edit various aspects of it with reference to an array of values, and then write as a new file. I'm wondering what the best way to do this is. Currently I am trying to read the file in with textread which gives me a cell, then I am editing strings in the cell but I am having issues writing what I have edited to a new file. As a basic example I would do this:

Read in file, 'greeting.txt', which contains:

Hello
I am XX years old
Nice to meet you

I would then reference the XX to an array, change it and write the new file. Any suggestions on how to do this effectively would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

[Bob Thompson]

For text files I usually read the file in with textread, and then run through for the lines I'm looking for using fgetl() which can be used to examine each line individually. I like to run this through a while loop since I don't know how long the file is, and I just look for specific strings to edit.

After that is done I print everything out using fprintf, when I have to use strings. I have admittedly not written out a large block of text before, but I would imagine if you put the line read, lined edit, and line print commands in a loop then you can read and write your files all within a loop. This is likely not the most efficient way.