How to read UTF-8 txt file by using MATLAB

[EDIT: 20110614 23:00 CDT - reformat - WDR]

I am a newer to learn Matlab, and I want to know how to load the text file into matrix.

I have a text file in form of .txt. The text is telling about a maze map.

In the text below Unicode code points are indicated in parentheses. Maze walls are indicated by "█" (U+2588). Free space is indicated by " " (U+0020). The Robot's starting point is indicated by "S" (U+0053) and the goal is indicated by "G" (U+0047).

█████████
█S    █ █
█ ███ █ █
█ █ █   █
███ ███ █
█   █   █
█ ███ ███
█      G█
█████████

In this case, how can I read the files like this.

I had tried fopen/textread. but it cannot load it.

Thank you very much for your helping.

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

Supposedly, fopen() can read unicode text file if the text file is saved with UTF-8 encoding, e.g. fid=fopen('test.txt','r','n','UTF-8'). But in your case, I think as long as you can distinguish those different characters, you can then process it for whatever you need. Assume the test.txt file contains the line shown in your question, the following lines can read it.

fid=fopen('test.txt','rt');
Maze=[];
while ~feof(fid)
    Line=fgetl(fid);
    Maze=[Maze;Line];
end
fclose(fid);
Maze
isspace(Maze)
[Xs,Ys]=find(Maze=='S')
[Xg,Yg]=find(Maze=='G')

Maze =

?????????
?S    ? ?
? ??? ? ?
? ? ?   ?
??? ??? ?
?   ?   ?
? ??? ???
?      G?
?????????

ans =

       0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0
       0     0     1     1     1     1     0     1     0
       0     1     0     0     0     1     0     1     0
       0     1     0     1     0     1     1     1     0
       0     0     0     1     0     0     0     1     0
       0     1     1     1     0     1     1     1     0
       0     1     0     0     0     1     0     0     0
       0     1     1     1     1     1     1     0     0
       0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     0

Xs =

       2

Ys =

       2

Xg =

       8

Yg =

       8

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

See the hints in this previous Question

Answer 3

[MathWorks Support Team]

As of R2020a, the MATLAB Editor and other functions like type, fopen, and fileread automatically determine the current encoding when opening existing files.