Is there a way to remove or rename a variable in a big MAT file?
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I want to rename/remove a variable in very large MAT file but want to avoid load all the data, modify variables and write all new data to the disk.
The MAT file is hundreds GB and load/write all leads to a heavy IO load.
5 Comments
Stephen23
on 15 Dec 2017
Edited: Stephen23
on 15 Dec 2017
@Ray Lee: fair enough.
As an alternative it may be possible to process the fieldnames using some regular expressions (or something similar) to allow for some variation in the names, at the point when the data is being loaded. This would then allow the file to remain unchanged.
Walter Roberson
on 15 Dec 2017
I find hints in the HDF5 documentation that renaming in-place might be possible -- but that might perhaps only apply to files constructed a particular way. -v7.3 MAT files are "modified" HDF5 format.
Accepted Answer
OCDER
on 15 Dec 2017
Edited: OCDER
on 15 Dec 2017
You can use MEX code to delete a variable from a .mat file, but then you still have to save the variable via -append feature. The mex code (RemoveVariableFromMatFile) was provided in the Q&A https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/254048-how-can-i-delete-variables-in-my-mat-file-without-loading-them-into-matlab-7-2-r2006a
You have to compile the MEX code using a C compiler https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/52848-matlab-support-for-mingw-w64-c-c++-compiler
mex RemoveVariableFromMatFile.c
Then you do this:
T = load('filename.mat', 'BadVarName');
GoodVarName = T.('BadVarName')
RemoveVariableFromMatFile('filename.mat', 'BadVarName');
save('filename.mat', 'GoodVarName', '-append')
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