I would like to extract each character from a text file. Later convert each character(in ASCII) to binary and store the binary form in an array.

For example, text file: example.txt which contains text "hello, hi". It will take each character and convert it to binary and store the value in an array.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Note that computers store characters and numbers in binary form, so it's not clear what you mean by "convert it to binary".

In any case, to read the file:

content = fileread('C:\full\path to\example.txt');

If you want matlab to display the ASCII value (strictly speaking it's not ASCII as characters can be outside the range 0-127):

asciivalues = double(content);

If what you meant is that you want the individual bits of each character as separate elements of your array:

charbits = cell2mat(arrayfun(@(c) bitget(c, 8:-1:1), asciivalues, 'UniformOutput', false));

[sb]

Thanks for the reply. Here I get a stream of binary bits combined of every character in the text file. But I need something like this:

for example: my text file contains "is"

i : 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1

s : 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1

I would like to have an array like this:

0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1

That is, I would like to have it in different rows.

[Guillaume]

Simply transpose the cell array returned by arrayfun before the call to cell2mat. That is:

charbits = cell2mat(arrayfun(@(c) bitget(c, 8:-1:1), asciivalues, 'UniformOutput', false)'); %note the '