dlmread reading file incorrectly

Hello,

i wrote a code using the following lines:

    clc
    clear all

    load('radius.mat')
    fidEK = fopen('PerEk.dat','r');
    filename = 'PerEk.dat';
    PerEK = dlmread(filename,'  ',2,0); %reading the PerEK.dat file

the file that i read is for example:

 VARIABLES = "X","Y","PerEk" 
 ZONE I= 501, J= 501  DATAPACKING=POINT
    0.99800E-03    0.99800E-03    0.61593E-11
    0.99800E-03    0.29940E-02    0.98748E-10
    0.99800E-03    0.49900E-02    0.45617E-09
    0.99800E-03    0.69860E-02    0.11994E-08

what i used to receive was as following:

    0.99800E-03    0.99800E-03    0.61593E-11
    0.99800E-03    0.29940E-02    0.98748E-10
    0.99800E-03    0.49900E-02    0.45617E-09
    0.99800E-03    0.69860E-02    0.11994E-08

and now for some reason i'm getting one column. can anyone help? i tried changing

 PerEK = dlmread(filename,'  ',2,0);

into

 PerEK = dlmread(filename,'\t',2,0);

didn't work.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

The data you have shown does not use tab as the delimiter, but uses four space characters.

You could use textscan, which has an option to merge repeated delimiters:

opts = {'HeaderLines',2, 'MultipleDelimsAsOne',true};
fid = fopen('temp.txt','rt');
M = cell2mat(textscan(fid,'%f%f%f',opts{:}));
fclose(fid);

imports this:

>> M
M =
  9.9800e-004  9.9800e-004  6.1593e-012
  9.9800e-004  2.9940e-003  9.8748e-011
  9.9800e-004  4.9900e-003  4.5617e-010
  9.9800e-004  6.9860e-003  1.1994e-009

[Shahar Idan]

thank you so much! saved my hours for my research! i noticed that the function dlmread was changed between matlab 2014 and 2016 an apparently my university updated to the newest version causing the function to read incorrectly '\t' or TAB. again, thanks.