How do I resolve CAT arguments dimensions, which are not consistent, when using cell2mat command?

I got a strange problem related to the reading in of space delimited text files. I’ve been attempting to read in several hundred blocks of data that look like this;

NFL58  23Mar2012  Show  2  1  01  0000000001  Low

001  25.187466  156.162447  21578.188  97.134234  stops  AAAAA  1  A10A

1.100000e-01  1.200000e-01  1.300000e-01  1.400000e-01  1.500000e-01  1.600000e-01  1.700000e-01  1.800000e-01  1.900000e-01
2.100000e-01  2.200000e-01  2.300000e-01  2.400000e-01  2.500000e-01  2.600000e-01  2.700000e-01  2.800000e-01  2.900000e-01
3.100000e-01  3.200000e-01  3.300000e-01  3.400000e-01  3.500000e-01  3.600000e-01  3.700000e-01  3.800000e-01  3.900000e-01
4.100000e-01  4.200000e-01  4.300000e-01  4.400000e-01  4.500000e-01  4.600000e-01  4.700000e-01  4.800000e-01  4.900000e-01
5.100000e-01  5.200000e-01  5.300000e-01  5.400000e-01  5.500000e-01  5.600000e-01  5.700000e-01  5.800000e-01  5.900000e-01
6.100000e-01  6.200000e-01  6.300000e-01  6.400000e-01  6.500000e-01  6.600000e-01  6.700000e-01  6.800000e-01  6.900000e-01
7.100000e-01  7.200000e-01  7.300000e-01  7.400000e-01  7.500000e-01  7.600000e-01  7.700000e-01  7.800000e-01  7.900000e-01
8.100000e-01  8.200000e-01  8.300000e-01  8.400000e-01  8.500000e-01  8.600000e-01  8.700000e-01  8.800000e-01  8.900000e-01
9.100000e-01  9.200000e-01  9.300000e-01  9.400000e-01  9.500000e-01  9.600000e-01  9.700000e-01  9.800000e-01  9.900000e-01

002  25.287466  156.162447  21578.288  97.234234  Done  BBBBB  2  A10B
1.120000e-01  1.200000e-01  1.300000e-01  1.400000e-01  1.500000e-01  1.600000e-01  1.700000e-01  1.800000e-01  1.900000e-01
2.120000e-01  2.200000e-01  2.300000e-01  2.400000e-01  2.500000e-01  2.600000e-01  2.700000e-01  2.800000e-01  2.900000e-01
3.120000e-01  3.200000e-01  3.300000e-01  3.400000e-01  3.500000e-01  3.600000e-01  3.700000e-01  3.800000e-01  3.900000e-01
4.120000e-01  4.200000e-01  4.300000e-01  4.400000e-01  4.500000e-01  4.600000e-01  4.700000e-01  4.800000e-01  4.900000e-01
5.120000e-01  5.200000e-01  5.300000e-01  5.400000e-01  5.500000e-01  5.600000e-01  5.700000e-01  5.800000e-01  5.900000e-01
6.120000e-01  6.200000e-01  6.300000e-01  6.400000e-01  6.500000e-01  6.600000e-01  6.700000e-01  6.800000e-01  6.900000e-01
7.120000e-01  7.200000e-01  7.300000e-01  7.400000e-01  7.500000e-01  7.600000e-01  7.700000e-01  7.800000e-01  7.900000e-01
8.120000e-01  8.200000e-01  8.300000e-01  8.400000e-01  8.500000e-01  8.600000e-01  8.700000e-01  8.800000e-01  8.900000e-01
9.120000e-01  9.200000e-01  9.300000e-01  9.400000e-01  9.500000e-01  9.600000e-01  9.700000e-01  9.800000e-01  9.900000e-01

My intent is to read all the data blocks (regardless of size) into cell arrays for future processing. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried reading in non-rectangular text files until now. I did some searching on the MATLAB WEB site for a sample of how this can be done. What I am trying to do is very similar to an example on the Mathworks site under examples for TEXTSCAN (Reading Arbitrary Format Text Files with TEXTSCAN). I ran the sample code with the test80211.txt file, and got the same results as the example. So I tried this approach with the data blocks shown above. But I keep getting the following error;

??? Error using ==> cat

CAT arguments dimensions are not consistent.

Error in ==> cell2mat at 81
            m{n} = cat(2,c{n,:});

Error in ==> TestScript2 at 44

      Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);

I began stepping through the code and noticed it ran good for the first data block, and the data variable had the 9x9 matrix I expected. However, I keep getting the above error on the 2nd block of data – at Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);

Here are the commands I’m utilizing (very similar to the example):

% Open text file
fid = fopen('BlockTypeTextTestFile.txt','r');

% Read Header Row (Row 1) as a string delimited by a carriage return
InputText=textscan(fid,'%s',1,'delimiter','\n');  
Headerline=InputText{1};
disp(Headerline);

% Initialize The Block Counter
Block = 1;

% Initialize the s variable
s = '';

% Lets read in each data block using TEXTSCAN for each line in the file. 
while ~feof(fid) 

      % Read row 2 delimited by a carriage return
      InputText=textscan(fid,'%f %f %f %f %f %5.0s %5.0s %f %5.0s',1,'delimiter','\n');  

      % Initialize the Number Of Columns Counter
      NumCols=InputText{1};

      % Create format string based on block number
      FormatString=repmat('%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f',1,NumCols);

      % Read 9 X 9 matrix data (all 9 lines) delimited by a carriage return
      InputText=textscan(fid,FormatString,9,'delimiter','\n');  

      % Convert to numerical array from cell
      Data{Block,1}=cell2mat(InputText);  

      %Size Of Table
      NumRows,NumCols]=size(Data{Block}); 

      % Increment the Block Counter
      Block = Block+1;

      % Ensure we're at the end of the file
      % where, isempty determines if next line is empty
      % and strvcat will concatenate strings vertically.
      % Close the figure after it appears as it is no longer needed.
      if isempty(line),break, end
      s = strvcat(s,line);

end

% Dispaly contents of s to the screen
disp(s)

%Close Text File
fclose(fid);

I’m stumped as to what could be causing the error. I've attempted to change the delimiter of the TEXTSCAN command to ' ' - no help.

The only thing I’ve noticed is that in the Workspace window, the FormatString value suddenly doubles from '%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f' to '%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f%f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f %f'

Any ideas as to what the source of the problem could be? Thank you. Brad.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

I'm not sure why you are setting the format according to NumCols which is the first value you read in in the sub-block header line? Isn't that value just the block number, not an indicator of how many values per line you expect to get?

[Brad]

Walter, thank you. I guess I was a little too close to the problem.