using textscan to load numbers from txt file

I am using textscan

tmp = textscan(fid,'%4f %q %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f','treatAsEmpty', 'n/a');

to load data which looks like (skipping few columns)

1950                     "Afghanistan"        8150.368

I get the year and the country without problems, but the third number is instead loaded as 0.8150...

I tried using something like %6.3f for the format input, but that just returns some dimension mismatch.

What am i doing wrong ?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

can you post a sample of your data (3 lines)

[DoVile Last Name:]

Sure

1950                     "Afghanistan"        8150.368                   n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a  

1951                     "Afghanistan"        8284.473                   n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a  

1952                     "Afghanistan"        8425.333                   n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a                   n/a                   n/a                n/a

Alot of n/a values for the early years :)

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Your answer is correct. Maybe its displaying something like

ans =

   1.0e+03 *

    8.1504
    8.2845
    8.4253

Check this

a=tmp{3};
a(1)

[DoVile Last Name:]

Ahh right :)

Thanks!