How to read one number from multiple text files

Hello,

I have been struggeling with finding a way to read 1000 text files into matlab. The text files have letters in them as well, however from every text file I only want one number. I have tried dlmread, that doesnt work. I Have tried fopen, I couldnt figure out how can I specifiy the numer location (which row and couloumn).

I would very much appreciate it if someone knows a way!!

[dpb]

Well, in general the simplest way to do such would be to just read the whole file into MATLAB and then do the selection in memory -- most of the time that will also be the fastest rather than doing partial reads inside the file itself.

To answer for a specific file would need to know what the actual file format is...a smallish sample that illustrates is always best.

[Maha Almarzooqi]

Thank you for your answer dpb,

I'm not sure what you excatly mean by doing the selction from memory.

The file format is just a "file" beacuse it is data from another program ANSYS, so there are words specifiying eaach coloumn. Looks something like this if I open it in notepad

[Walter Roberson]

Okay, and which one number would you want out of that?

[Maha Almarzooqi]

row 5 couloumn 6 --> -7.89296...

[dpb]

That's a trivial file format to read presuming that is the beginning of the file...

data=readmatrix('Yourfilename.txt','NumHeaderLines',1,'Range','E6');

the overhead of the specific element read may/may not be significant; the previous suggestion would have just been

data=readmatrix('Yourfilename.txt','NumHeaderLines',1);  % read full data array
data=data(5,6);      % keep the wanted data

Answer 1

[Sindhu Karri]

This is an alternate solution

fileID = fopen('textfile.txt','r');%textfile to be included in the current folder path
formatSpec = '%d %d %d %d';
sizeA = [4 6];%dimensions of the data to be read
A = fscanf(fileID,formatSpec,sizeA);
A=A'
b=A(6,3)% to get the specified number
fclose(fileID);

Refer to below link

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/fscanf.html

[Walter Roberson]

You need an initial fgets(fileID) to skip the header line.

What is the reasoning for bothering to take the transpose? Why not omit it and use A(3,6) ?

[Maha Almarzooqi]

Thank you for your answers dpb and sindhu. I also agree with Walter regarding the concern on why the transpose?