Using FGETL to skip 2 header lines

How do I use FGETL to skip 2 header lines?

My data file looks like this

Row 1: ID FName LName Year Class

Row 2: ---------------------------------

Row 3: data starts here

After I open the file with FOPEN

fid=fopen('textfile.dat','r');

How do I use FGETL to skip the 2 header lines (rows 1 & 2)?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Call it twice and ignore the results.

[ERC]

Thanks for your reply. How do I call it twice? (sorry, newbie here. Only 2nd week into my matlab class.)

fid=fopen('textfile.dat','r');
line=fgetl(fid);

[Cedric]

 fid=fopen('textfile.dat','r');
 fgetl(fid);                       % Read/discard 1 line.
 fgetl(fid);                       % Read/discard 1 line.

 % Then you start reading and processing lines.

[ERC]

Thank you!

[Cedric]

Don't forget to [ Accept the Answer ] if it solved your problem.

[ERC]

Done. Thanks for the reminder.

Answer 2

[Dan Seal]

A good way to read data from text files with headers is with the textscan function. When calling textscan, you an specify a number of header rows in your file. For example, if ID and Year are numeric and the other columns are strings, use:

fid=fopen('textfile.dat','r');
C = textscan(fid, '%d %s %s %d %s', 'HeaderLines', 2);