Development Environment

Importing Numeric Data with Text Headers

To import an ASCII data file that contains text headers, use the textread function, specifying the headerlines parameter. textread accepts a set of predefined parameters that control various aspects of the conversion. (For a complete list of these parameters, see the textread reference page.) The headerlines parameter lets you specify the number of lines at the head of the file that textread should ignore.

For example, the file grades.dat contains formatted numeric data with a one-line text header.

• Grade1 Grade2 Grade3
  78.8     55.9   45.9
  99.5     66.8   78.0
  89.5     77.0   56.7
  

To import this data, use this command:

• [grade1 grade2 grade3] = textread('grades.dat','%f %f %f',...
  'headerlines',1)
  
  grade1 =
     78.8000
     99.5000
     89.5000
  
  grade2 =
     55.9000
     66.8000
     77.0000
  
  grade3 =
     45.9000
     78.0000
     56.7000
  

Importing Delimited ASCII Data Files

Importing Mixed Alphabetic and Numeric Data