saving a .csv file with text values as a .mat file

I tried using csvread, but it only accepts csv files with numeric values. I want to convert a csv file e.g. fisheriris.csv to .mat file, how can i do that?

Also, how to change the class labels with numbers or letters like a,b,c.. ?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

T = readtable('fisheriris.csv');
Tlabcat = categorical(T{:,5});
Tcats = categories(Tlabcat);
Tlabnum = double(Tlabcat);
Tnum = [T{:,1:4}, Tlabnum];

Now Tcats is a cell array of character vectors indicating the category names, and Tnum is a double array of the data, with the last column being a class number converted from the text category labels.

[Apurva Jariwala]

Thank you very much!