- use READTABLE (then the variable/column names can be almost anything)
- use a structure (then the fieldnames can be any valid MATLAB name)
textscan: strings and variables
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Hi,
I have some csv file which contains numbers and strings (example below)
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/837940/image.png)
The column headers are in seperate file from the data, but can be merged to the same one.
I'd like to import the data with textscan (as I have old version of MATLAB-R14) and assign it to some variable (which is the column name) for further analysis.
How can I do that?
For numbers I use something like
eval (column name = [column data])
For time: as it with same length - I also don't have any issue (as I can split the data into 3 coulns and later handle it with time related functions).
But what about other ones where the string values are with variable length (like RATE or STATUS columns as in the example)?
3 Comments
Walter Roberson
on 18 Dec 2021
https://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2005/12/13/use-dynamic-field-references/
Dynamic field names existed in your release (R13 introduction), and for earlier releases use setfield()
Answers (1)
Stephen23
on 18 Dec 2021
Edited: Stephen23
on 18 Dec 2021
Perhaps something like this, a more robust approach using a structure (this still requires that the headers are valid MATLAB names):
opt = {'Delimiter',','};
fid = fopen('test.txt','rt');
hdr = fgetl(fid);
tmp = textscan(fid,'%s%f%f%s%f%s',opt{:});
fclose(fid);
hdr = regexp(hdr,'[^,]+','match');
out = cell2struct(tmp,hdr,2)
out.TIME
out.LAT
out.LON
1 Comment
Walter Roberson
on 18 Dec 2021
Edited: Walter Roberson
on 18 Dec 2021
after getting hdr, pass it through genvarname(), which will convert invalid names (such as containing spaces or punctuation) into valid names, and will further modify names to ensure that they are unique (in case two columns has the same name, one will be given a suffix)
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