Import multiple text files to separate arrays

I have 3 text files with 17 columns of numeric data and varying row size. I am trying to import the text files, and assign them to their own matrix so I can compare file1 to file 2, etc. I have used textscan and can get all of the data into a cell array, but am unsure how to get separate cell arrays for each file so if I have 3 or 5 or 10 files, it would work the same.

The error I currently get is "Unable to perform assignment because the indices on the left side are not compatible with the size of the right side." I believe this is because I have a "temp" variable with only 3 columns compared to the 17 columns I am importing. But I am unsure how to rectify the problem. This is what I have so far using MATLAB 2018b.

clc
clear

cd H:\MATLAB\Practice

files = dir('*.txt');

for i = 1:length(files)
    
   
    fid = fopen(files(i).name);
     
    temp(:,i) = cell2mat(textscan(fid,'%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f','Delimiter','\t','CollectOutput',1));
    
    fclose(fid);
    
end

[Walter Roberson]

Assign to temp{i} instead of temp(:,i)

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Following the examples in the MATLAB documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/import_export/process-a-sequence-of-files.html

and avoid using cd in code. For example:

fmt = repmat('%f',1,17);
opt = {'Delimiter','\t','CollectOutput',true};
D = 'H:\MATLAB\Practice';
S = dir(fullfile(D,'*.txt'));
N = numel(S);
C = cell(1,N);
for k = 1:N
    fid = fopen(fullfile(D,S(k).name));
    C(k) = textscan(fid,fmt,opt{:});
    fclose(fid);
end

[L1n022]

Thank you for the help with the problem and cleaning up my code! Works great!