Copy dedicated values from a text file and store them inside Excel sheet

hello. I have several text files which have data stored in them in following manner:

1.1 ECU Identification (Ford Escape Initial)

PDU Parameter Value Unit
       [7E8]                                                                                 
06 00  OBDMIDs                                    OBDmonitorIDsSupported$01_$1F              
       ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        supported                                  
       ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor2        supported                                  
06 01  Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        
       testValue                                  0.009                                      s
       minimumTestLimit                           0.000                                      s
       maximumTestLimit                           0.400                                      s
       Test ID                                    0x87                                       
       Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        
       testValue                                  0.020                                      s
       minimumTestLimit                           0.000                                      s
       maximumTestLimit                           0.400                                      s
       Test ID                                    0x88                                       
06 02  Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor2        
       testValue                                  -7876                                      mV/s
       minimumTestLimit                           -30000                                     mV/s
       maximumTestLimit                           0                                          mV/s
       Test ID                                    0x85                                       
       Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor2        
       testValue                                  1.889                                      s
       minimumTestLimit                           0.000                                      s
       maximumTestLimit                           6.000                                      s
       Test ID                                    0x86                                       
06 20  OBDMIDs                                    OBDmonitorIDsSupported$21_$3F              
       CatalystMonitorBank1                       supported                                  
       VVTMonitorBank1                            supported                                  
       EVAPmonitorCapOff                          not supported                              
       EVAPmonitor_0_090                          supported                                  
       EVAPmonitor_0_040                          supported                                  
       EVAPmonitor_0_020                          supported                                  
       PurgeFlowMonitor                           supported

and so on...

I need to copy and store the values given in the parameter and value columns against PDU values in an Excel sheet. I am fairly new to MATLAB programming and I know xlsread can be used in this Situation but I dont know how. Any Kind of help in this regard is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Walter Roberson]

xlsread() cannot be used for that file. The file is not a spreadsheet and it is not comma separated values.

Is it possible that in the original file, the columns are separated by tabs?

[yousaf obaid]

here is the text file that i am using, and no i dont think that the columns are separated by Tabs.

[Walter Roberson]

let us take a small portion of that for illustration:

06 00  OBDMIDs                                    OBDmonitorIDsSupported$01_$1F              
       ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        supported                                  
       ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor2        supported                                  
06 01  Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        
       testValue                                  0.009                                      s
       minimumTestLimit                           0.000                                      s
       maximumTestLimit                           0.400                                      s
       Test ID                                    0x87                                       
       Monitor ID                                 ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1        
       testValue                                  0.020                                      s
       minimumTestLimit                           0.000                                      s
       maximumTestLimit                           0.400                                      s
       Test ID                                    0x88

What would you want the output to be for that portion?

[yousaf obaid]

in ideal condition it would be very complicated, well to me it seems very complicated but for right now, i would like to copy this exact format right in to the excel spreadsheet.

[Walter Roberson]

Do you want each line to become one cell? Or do you want it separated out, so for example,

{'06', '00', 'OBDMIDs', 'OBDmonitorIDsSupported$01_$1F';
 [],   [],   'ExhaustGasSensorMonitorBank1Sensor1', 'supported';
 ...

Do you need the numeric values to be detected and converted into numeric form? For example, 0.009 stored instead of '0.009' ? How about the '0x87', should that be converted to numeric 135 ?

[yousaf obaid]

importing this text file into a cell Array and then onto Excel spreadsheet. Thats what i have been trying to do till now but unsuccessful in doing so.

[yousaf obaid]

actually no. 0X87 should remain 0X87. And the above format that you posted seems about right, except that it should be 06 00 instead of '06' '00' and so on.

[yousaf obaid]

help please!!! Thank you :)

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Are you sure you want the 06 00 to come out as numeric? Those are hex values not decimal. Did you possibly mean that you wanted '06 00' instead of '06' '00'?

I have attached a function to read the contents of one of these files. The code converts the hex PDU numbers to decimal because you seemed to request that. You also implicitly approved that for example '0.009' should become 0.009 so I convert the 4th column to numeric whenever that works out and leave it as text when it does not.

The output of the code is a cell array that you can then xlswrite().

Example:

odx = readodx('Test1.txt');
xlswrite('Test1.xlsx', odx);

For consistency, I convert all empty fields to the empty numeric array, [], rather than to empty strings, ''

Empty lines are skipped.

The column numbers and widths are hard-coded, the P and L vectors in the code. The string fields are permitted to contain blanks, which would make it difficult for the program to figure out where the columns started.

The starting line is not hard-coded, but the code currently does expect to see the 'PDU' line and for there to be the dashed line below it.

[yousaf obaid]

Thank you so much for the detailed answer. With some tweaks here and there, i managed to run it successfully. Thank you once again.