define end of line (eol) as unix (\n) not Windows (\r\n) using writecell

I've got a cell of strings I'd like to write to a text file using the writecell funciton, however, the end of line (eol or newline or line break) is in Windows format (\r\n or CR LF) but I need it to be in Unix (\n or LF).

I'm using Windows OS.

Code to generate text file output:

my_cell_of_strings = [{"Some string"}; {"Another string"}];

writecell(my_cell_of_strings, 'testEOL.', 'FileType','text', 'QuoteStrings', false)

Then e.g. opening in Notepad++ I can see the format is Windows (CR LF) but I need Unix (LF)

I see dlmwrite has the Name-Value pair 'newline' (https://uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/dlmwrite.html#btzn85y-1-newline) but writecell doesn't seem to.

Are there any simple solutions?

(I can open in Notepad++ and convert eol but it's not really feasible for many files so needing to do it programatically).

(I could use a loop and fprintf etc. but like the convenience of writecell)

Thanks in advance!

Chris

[Stephen23]

WRITECELL is ultimately just a wrapper around WRITETABLE.

WRITETABLE calls matlab.io.internal.writing.writeToTextFile, which does not seem to have any option for changing the EOL character. Most likely Walter Roberson is the right person to ask about this.

[Chris P]

Thanks, Stephen - I thought that'd be the case. Wonder if it might be included in future release, it'd be a good one-liner!

Answer 1

[Jan]

What about writing directly?

C   = [{"Some string"}; {"Another string"}];
fid = fopen('testEOL.txt', 'w');
fprintf(fid, '%s\n', C{:});
fclose(fid)

[Chris P]

Thanks, Jan.

For some reason I handn't twigged that using the curly braces in fprint would work as neatly as it does - couple of extra lines vs writecell but I'll roll with it :)

Answer 2

[Rik]

You can hack a solution together:

1. Write the file with CRLF with writecell
2. Read the file as a text file (e.g. with readfile or readlines)
3. Write the files back with fprintf(fid,'%s\n',data{:}) to write with LF only (do not fopen with the t flag)

Not elegant, not efficient, but simple.

[Chris P]

Thannks, Rik. Afraid I've gone for Jan's anwer though as it probably works best for me ...although your's does accurately answer my question!