Importing just one column from a file.

Hi, I have a dat. file and it has this structure:

5 2
2 4
1 1 1 1 1 
2 3 4
1 0 0 3 5
1
...

and it goes on, so it´s like a lot of vectors. I need to get the values just from the "x dimension", so I need to get the first column of each vector (till the end of the matrix, each line has at least one number). I have tried lots of methods, but no one seems work.

I would appreciate if you could send me a "command name" or a link for research.

Thanks,

Ricardo.

[Jan]

The format of the file is not clear.

Please post what you have done and explain, which errors or problems occurred. It is much easier to fix a problem that to create a new program.

[Ricardo]

The fact was that I couldn´t make a single column vector of

transpose of [5 2 1 2 1 1], I have imported the data with lots of commands and I couldn´t exclude the information from further columns from the new vectors and matrices I have created.

It wasn´t like an error occuring, just an objective I wasn´t able to achieve. But Walter´s answer has already solved the problem.

Thanks for your time !!!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

fid = fopen('YourFile.txt','rt');
indata = textscan(fid,'%f%*[^\n]');
fclose(indata);
x = indata{1};

Answer 2

[Wayne King]

Is it just numeric data without any text, or header?

If so, how about dlmread()

You can use dlmread() to read a specified range.

      RESULT = dlmread(FILENAME,DELIMITER,RANGE) reads the range specified
      by RANGE = [R1 C1 R2 C2] where (R1,C1) is the upper-left corner of
      the data to be read and (R2,C2) is the lower-right corner.  RANGE
      can also be specified using spreadsheet notation as in RANGE    = 'A1..B7'.

[Wayne King]

I agree with Jan about the format, looking at your example more closely -- I'm much less convince that you can identify the range.

[Ricardo]

Yeah, I can´t define a range, Walter´s answer really helped.

Thanks for your attention.