How to save the contents of an external file, located outside of MATLAB project path, in an internal MATLAB variable

Hi, I would like to save the contents of an external file in the variable data. So far, I have this code, and it works:

file = "1.txt";
ffile = fopen(file,"rt");
temp = textscan(ffile,"%s","delimiter","\n");
data = temp{1};
fclose(ffile);

However, the file 1.txt must be in the active MATLAB path. I would like to change the path to

I tried to change the first line to: file = "C:\path1\path2\1.txt", but I get the following errors.

Error using textscan

Invalid file identifier. Use fopen to generate a valid file identifier.

Error in readres (line 6)

temp = textscan(ffile,"%s","delimiter","\n");

Does someone have any suggestion on how to get this to work?

I thank you in advance,

[Adam Danz]

Always provide the entire error message when reporting an error.

[Hugo]

The thread was edited. Thank you for your suggestion.

[Stephen23]

Get a more informative error message by obtaining the second output of fopen:

P = 'C:\path1\path2';
F = '1.txt';
[fid,msg] = fopen(fullfile(P,F),'rt');
assert(fid>=3,msg)
% your file importing code
fclose(fid)

But in any case, it looks like you should be using readlines:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/readlines.html