How to go from a char that is a CSV to a cell array

Hello all,

I have a char variable that is essentially a CSV file, however all attempts to turn it into a cell array (through simple means) have failed. Lets say my char variable looks like:

inputchar = 'name,bob,joe,paul
             age,12,43,15'

(note there is a \n after paul) I would like my output to simply be a cell array to appear as:

outputcellarray = {'name','bob','joe','paul';
                   'age',12,43,15}

While I am aware of csvread, since I am trying to read from a char variable instead of a CSV file, I am having trouble. Any suggestions or simple workarounds other than writing an entire function to do this?

Thanks so much for the help everyone! Will

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

Are you sure you want to store your data like this, i.e., all in a single cell array? Take a look at textscan to read you cvs file. Otherwise this might do the trick:

inputchar = 'name,bob,joe,paul\nage,12,43,15'
X = strrep(inputchar,'\n',',')      % get rid of the line break
C = strread(X,'%s','delimiter',',') % read everything as a string
C = reshape(C,[],2).'               % reshape in right format
V = str2double(C)                   % convert numbers
tf = ~isnan(V)                      % find these numbers
C(tf) = num2cell(V(tf))             % put them in place. Voila!

Answer 2

[Will Kinsman]

After messing around a little bit it seems to me that the simplest solution may to be:

outputcellarray = readtext(inputchar,,,,'textsource')

this is a file on the file exchange that appears to be pretty lightweight and will allow me to do what I am trying to here.