Problem with importing data from tab delimited .txt file

I have a very long 5-column text data with tab as delimiter, for example say that 'txtfile.txt' has 7 lines:

144141 180738085 two two mc

144141 180738086 of of io

144141 180738087 us us ppio2

144141 180738088 . . .

144141 180738089 " " "

144141 180738090 Hollywood hollywood np1

144141 180738091 Heartbeat heartbeat np1

using importdata i get a 7X1 cell array like the following:

importdata('txtfile.txt','\t') % same for importdata('txtfile.txt')

output:

{'144141→180738085→two→two→mc'             }
{'144141→180738086→of→of→io'               }
{'144141→180738087→us→us→ppio2'            }
{'144141→180738088→.→.→.'                  }
{'144141→180738089→"→"→"'                  }
{'144141→180738090→Hollywood→hollywood→np1'}
{'144141→180738091→Heartbeat→heartbeat→np1'}

So importdata doesn't work. If I use readtable I get a 5X5 table like the following:

readtable('txtfile.txt') % also for readtable('txtfile.txt','Delimiter','tab')

output:

  Var1          Var2        Var3                                                    Var4                                                     Var5   
    __________    __________    _______    ________________________________________________________________________________________________    __________

    1.4414e+05    1.8074e+08    {'two'}    {'two'                                                                                         }    {'mc'    }
    1.4414e+05    1.8074e+08    {'of' }    {'of'                                                                                          }    {'io'    }
    1.4414e+05    1.8074e+08    {'us' }    {'us'                                                                                          }    {'ppio2' }
    1.4414e+05    1.8074e+08    {'.'  }    {'.'                                                                                           }    {'.'     }
    1.4414e+05    1.8074e+08    {'→' }    {'←↵144141→180738090→Hollywood→hollywood→np1←↵144141→180738091→Heartbeat→heartbeat→np1'}    {0×0 char}
    

So something about having a quotation mark in the text file ruins it.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Ive J]

What about this

 tan = array2table(split(splitlines(fileread('tab.txt'))));

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

have you tried with textscan ?

for an obscure reason , I had to copy paste the tab from the text file to get a correct output :

% opt = {'Delimiter','tab','CollectOutput',true}; % KO
opt = {'Delimiter','	','CollectOutput',true};% OK

fmt = '%f%f%s%s%s';
[fid,msg] = fopen('data_tab2.txt','rt');
assert(fid>=3,msg)
out = textscan(fid,fmt,opt{:})
fclose(fid);

gives me :

[Mathieu NOE]

>> out{1}

ans =

144141 180738085

144141 180738086

144141 180738087

144141 180738090

144141 180738091

>> out{2}

ans =

5×3 cell array

{'two' } {'two' } {'mc' }

{'of' } {'of' } {'io' }

{'us' } {'us' } {'ppio2'}

{'Hollywood'} {'hollywood'} {'np1' }

{'Heartbeat'} {'heartbeat'} {'np1' }

[Mathieu NOE]

you can get the same result by combining readlines and split - still remain the question why the tab option is not working in readlines

s = importdata('data_tab.txt','\t');
sp = split(s,'	');

[yuval]

I ended up using

s = importdata(file_name);
sp = split(s,'	');

because a couple of the other suggestions had a problem with empty values, i.e. two consecutive tabs. It works well although a bit slow.

Thanks everyone!