Importing data from multiple .dat files into an array

I have several hundred .dat files (saved in folders of ~15 for each geographic location they represent) that I want to add to my structural array, with each column as a field:

ie. the column headed density becomes

TVC.Date.Location.SMP.Profiles.Number.density_smp

However, my .dat files have 4 rows of metadata and then the headers before the data I need starts.

I've created a filelist for the first folder containing the .dat files and then tried

% pit RP_04
cd 'G:\Uni_Work\PHD\Data\Trail Valley Creek\Winter 2018-19\January 2019\SMP\Processed\RP_04';
FileList39 = dir('*.dat');    % generate a list of filenames which can be used to generate locations of profiles

Data_and_Headers = importdata(FileList39(1), '\t');

I've tried "ImportData" and "ReadTable" which I saw suggested on here, and had no luck with either. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

Try readmatrix and specify the number of header lines

readmatrix(FileList39(1).name, 'NumHeaderLines', 5)

or readtable with

readtable(FileList39(1).name, 'HeaderLines', 5)

[Victoria Dutch]

Thanks for the suggestion! However, I tried and got the following error:

[Ameer Hamza]

Please check the updated answer. dir('*.dat') returns a struct array, and you need to access its name field.

[Victoria Dutch]

Thanks. I think this gets me half way there. How would I then save column from this double as matrices?

[Ameer Hamza]

Have you read the files using readmatrix or readtable? readmatrix already outputs a matrix, for readtable you can use table2array.