Convert Cell Arrays Containing Cell Arrays to separate columns

I am trying to import specific number of lines from an output text file. I have used the textscan command to import the required lines. The imported data consists of 1000x1 cells (see the figure below). Any idea how to convert these cells into three separate columns?

% open the file
fid=fopen('dbe-ew-transient analysis - 5% critical damped.f06'); 
% set linenum to the desired line number that you want to import
linenum = 165164;
% use '%s' if you want to read in the entire line or use '%f' if you want to read only the first numeric value
C = textscan(fid,'%s',1000,'delimiter','\n', 'headerlines',linenum-1);
M = C{:};

Thanks in advance.

[Stephen23]

"any idea how to convert these cells into three separate columns?"

Did you try specifying the TEXTSCAN format string and delimiter to read the three columns as numeric?

Or perhaps using READTABLE or READMATRIX?

Importing the data correctly as numeric would likely be much simpler than trying to fiddle around with it as text.

[Mahmoud Madany]

The main problem is that the output file contains both numerical and text characters. So the specific range defined above is to import numeric data only from the file.

Regarding the READTABLE or READMATRIX, I struggled with the file format, i.e., "*.f06", which is not pupular, and to define a specific range of data.

I tried to CollectOutput option in textscan, where a value of zero is assign, but the data is still imported into a single column.

*Attached a sample of the imported file (I changes the extension to *.txt as attachment option does not support *.f06 files).

[Stephen23]

"I struggled with the file format, i.e., "*.f06", which is not pupular"

The file extension is irrelevant, you just need tell them that it is a text file using the option: "FileType","text":

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/readmatrix.html#namevaluepairs

Answer 1

[DGM]

The comments in the code suggest how to do this. Using the attached test file with some header lines to skip:

fid = fopen('test.txt'); 
% set linenum to the desired line number that you want to import
linenum = 4;
% use '%s' if you want to read in the entire line or use '%f' if you want to read only the first numeric value
C = textscan(fid,'%f %f %f',1000,'delimiter','\n', 'headerlines',linenum-1);
fclose(fid);

C = cell2mat(C)

C = 5×3

1.0e+04 * 0.0001 1.0002 0.0000 0.0002 1.0002 0.0000 0.0003 1.0002 0.0000 0.0004 1.0002 0.0000 0.0005 1.0002 0.0000

Answer 2

[Chunru]

fn ='dbe-ew-transient analysis - 5% critical damped.f06'; 
linenum = 165164;
M = readmatrix(fn, 'Range', 165164+":"+999);