readtable using space as unwanted delimiter

I have a CSV that includes a field containing multiple numbers separated by spaces that I would like to read as a single column. My data is of the form:

name,var1,var2,var3,var4
some name,1.1,2.2,3.3,44 5.5
other name,6.6,7.7,8.8,99 0.0

I would like it to be output as:

         name        var1     var2     var3       var4
      __________     ____     ____     ____     _________

      some name      1.1      2.2      3.3      44   5.5
      other name     6.6      7.7      8.8      99   0.0

The problem is using readtable() reads the spaces in the last column as delimiters. I have tried explicitly setting the delimiter:

data = readtable(file, 'Delimiter', ',');

To no avail. It seems to work on strings, just not on numbers. I would prefer to not explicitly define the format as column order may change. If it can't be done easily I can always resort to a custom reader using textscan()...

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Possibly, this would work (or a variation upon it):

data = readtable(file, 'Delimiter', ',', 'Format', '%s,%f,%f,%f,%s')

That is override the format of the row to force interpretation of the last two numbers as a string.

Answer 2

[Star Strider]

I don’t use readtable much, but looking through the documentation, there are options you may want to consider. One is 'TreatAsEmpty' and another is 'FileType'. I don’t have your file to experiment with, so I can’t suggest anything more specific.

[Callum Clarke]

I had a look through the readtable script, which ends up calling readfromfile > readtextfile > textscan. Turns out readtextfile infers the structure from the first row, which in my data only has a single value in the column that should allow multiple values. Custom code it is then!

[Star Strider]

You should be able to do it with textscan. It’s flexible enough to be able to read your file, although you might have to write a separate fscanf (or textscan) call to read the first line.