Importing data from text file

I need help reading a number of data files. An example of how the files look is the following:

# some header text and numbers
# there are around 15 lines of this, the number of lines changes
# H K L Delta more names
  1 2 90 22
  2 4 5  9
  1 8 7  2

I need to get the columns of H, K, L and a few others out of this file. The problem is that the number of header lines changes, the number of columns changes, the order of the parameters in the columns changes, and the length of the columns change.

So another file could be

# some different header text and numbers
# here are some numbers
# there are around 15 lines of this, the number of lines changes
# Delta L H K Delta more names
  4 2 9 40
  2 4 5  9

To complicate things, all my data files are in one big text file. I have read it using

alldata=fileread(filename);

and then find the individual files by searching for a string that denotes the start of a new file:

start_index=strfind(alldata,startstring);
end_index=strfind(alldata,endstring);
this_file=alldata(start_index:end_index);

What I get out of this is a 1xn character string. When I do

this_file

In the MATLAB window, I get the output shown above. This is where I got stuck.

EDIT:

I found a solution. In short, I used

comment_indices=strfind(data_file,'#');

to remove the first lines of comments

lineshift_indices=strfind(data_file,sprintf('\n'));

to find where the actual data starts

header_names=data_file(1:lineshift_indices(1));
header_names=strsplit(header_names);

to find the header names

and then

H_ind=find(ismember(header_names,'H'));

to find the column for each header.

It works as intended, but if anyone has suggestions for improvements, I'd be happy to see them

Answer 1

[Miroslav Balda]

You have preprocessed the problem rather far. Store 'the_file' in the text file, say 'data.txt' and then use the function txt2mat

         www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/18430

for creating matrix A containing your data columns.

Good luck!

Mira

[Henrik]

Hi Mira

Thanks for the answer. I didn't like the idea of having to save the data in another file, so I tried some more Googling etc. My solution is not pretty, but it works. I'll edit it into my question.

Henrik