dlmread with ^ as delimiter

Hi, Attached a text file where the ^ delimiter works well to import it to excel. The automatic import tab in matlab is failing to import it . I tried also the dlmread function using '^' as a delimiter but it didn't work. Any help is appreciated

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

No file attached

[Jan]

Please post the used code. We cannot guess, if it contains a typo. And explain "didn't work" with details: Do you get an error message or do the results differ from your expectations?

[wesso Dadoyan]

I reattached the file.sorry for the inconvenience

[wesso Dadoyan]

for example using dlmread('bhcf0003.txt','^') led to the following error:

Error using dlmread (line 138)
Mismatch between file and format string.
Trouble reading number from file (row 1u, field 1u) ==>
rssd9999^rssd9001^BHCK0081^BHCK0395^BHCK0397^BHCK1350^BHCK2122^BHCK3123^BHCK3128^BHCK2125^BHCK2145^BHCK2150^BHCK2130^BHCK2155^BHCK3164^BHCK3163^BHCK2160^BHCK2170^BHDM6631^BHDM6636^BHFN6631^BHFN6636^BH

Error in Step1ReadCallReports (line 2)
dlmread('bhcf0003.txt','^')

also the automatic import didn't have the desired values (look at the difference between excel and matlab and the attached snapshots)

Answer 1

[dpb]

"Trouble reading number from file (row 1u, field 1u) ==>rssd9999^rssd9001^BHCK0081^BHCK0395^..."

>> help dlmread
dlmread Read ASCII delimited file.
  RESULT = dlmread(FILENAME) reads numeric data from the ASCII
  delimited file FILENAME.  The delimiter is inferred from the formatting
  of the file.
  ...
  All data in the input file must be numeric. dlmread does not operate 
  on files containing nonnumeric data, even if the specified rows and
  columns for the read contain numeric data only.

You can't read the file with dlmread per the doc above; it must be numeric data only. Use textscan

ADDENDUM

OK, w/ more info on the file that that's a header line, if you have recent release of Matlab, try readtable instead. It should figure out the number of elements/record automagically.

[wesso Dadoyan]

there is no nonnumeric data in the file.What you see are the column headers.

[Walter Roberson]

The column headers are stored in the file, right? dlmread() cannot handle text anywhere in the file.

[dpb]

That IS nonumeric data in the file; reread the help...

Answer 2

[Jan]

DataStr  = fileread('bhcf0003.txt');
DataCell = regexp(DataStr, '\^', 'split');

Now you have a cell string: {'rssd9999', 'rssd9001', 'BHCK0081', ...}

[wesso Dadoyan]

I obtained 1x2561266 cell array. I have too many files like this where each row should correspond to a firm. It is very confusing to extract the data related to a specific firm from this cell array. All what I am wondering about is how to read in matlab the text file that I sent the way excel reads it.