How do I treat space in a text file as leading zeros?

I am reading in numbers from a text file to a string. For example, consider the string below, which contains 4 integers: 99919, 99920, 100000, 99997:

>> str=' 99919 99920100000 99997'

Each takes up exactly 6 characters in the string, with leading zeros shown as spaces. I am trying to use "textscan" to read these numbers one-by-one,

>> t = textscanf(str,'%6d')

>> celldisp(t)

but it is not working as expected.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The "textscan" function cannot interpret spaces as numbers, so the best solution would be to convert all spaces to leading zeros.

To start, read the contents of your file into a single character vector, using "fileread". Convert all spaces in the character vector to leading zeros. Then, use "textscan" as before. For example, using the attached text file:

>> str = fileread('t.txt');

>> str(str == ' ') = '0';

>> t =textscan(str,'%6d');

>> celldisp(t)