remove the Text from the files

Hi all,

i have a big number of fileswhich contains data with this structure. Is there any easy method to remove the Text and get only the numbers. Thank you!

Text

Text    Text     Text

5.420   12   0.6555

5.430   0   0.6698

2.440   5   0.6236

7.450   1   0.6324

9.460   15   0.6331

Text

Text    Text     Text

5.420   127   0.6555

5.430   0   0.6698

2.440   5   0.6236

7.450   1   0.6324

9.460   129   0.6331

Text
.....
...

[Varun Pai]

can you please share one such file? What type of data is it ? Is that an imported file.

[Rica]

it is a .txt file

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

This is fast and easy using textscan in a loop:

k = 0;
opt = {'MultipleDelimsAsOne',true};
fid = fopen('temp.txt','rt');
tmp = textscan(fid,'%s',1);
while ~isempty(tmp{1}) && k<1000
    k = k+1;
    C(k,:) = tmp; %#ok<SAGROW>
    D(k,:) = textscan(fid,'%s%s%s',1,opt{:}); %#ok<SAGROW>
    M(k,:) = textscan(fid,'%f%f%f',opt{:}); %#ok<SAGROW>
    %
    tmp = textscan(fid,'%s',1);
end
fclose(fid);

It works because textscan will read only as much of the file as its format string matches. Every time it reaches the end of a block of text+numeric data we loop back to start again... until finally textscan does not match anything (i.e. the end of the file), then we stop.

The output cell arrays contain all of the data from the file:

>> C
C = 
    {1x1 cell}
    {1x1 cell}
>> C{1}
ans = 
    'Text'
>> M
M = 
    [5x1 double]    [5x1 double]    [5x1 double]
    [5x1 double]    [5x1 double]    [5x1 double]
>> M{1}
ans =
    5.4200
    5.4300
    2.4400
    7.4500
    9.4600

Because the original question did not include any sample data-file I created this test file:

Answer 2

[TastyPastry]

Read in the first line, use str2num(). If the result is [], read the next line. If it's a numerical line, it should return a 1x3 vector. Store that. Continue reading in lines.