Development Environment

Importing Numeric Data with Text Headers

To import an ASCII data file that contains text headers, use the textread function, specifying the headerlines parameter. textread accepts a set of predefined parameters that control various aspects of the conversion. (For a complete list of these parameters, see the textread reference page.) The headerlines parameter lets you specify the number of lines at the head of the file that textread should ignore.

For example, the file, grades.dat, contains formatted numeric data with a one-line text header.

Grade1 Grade2 Grade3
78.8     55.9   45.9
99.5     66.8   78.0
89.5     77.0   56.7

To import this data, use this command:

[grade1 grade2 grade3] = textread('grades.dat','%f %f %f',...
'headerlines',1)

grade1 =
   78.8000
   99.5000
   89.5000

grade2 =
   55.9000
   66.8000
   77.0000

grade3 =
   45.9000
   78.0000
   56.7000

Importing Delimited ASCII Data Files

Importing Mixed Alphabetic and Numeric Data