Why textscan only reading 1 line (headerline + 1st line)

Code:

filename='virtual_measurements.dat';
fid=fopen(filename);
A=textscan(fid,'%16c %f %f %f %f %f','HeaderLines',1);

Data:

 date [yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM] J [mm/h] Q [mm/h] ET [mm/h]  Cin [-]   wi [-]  measC_Q [-]
         2012-09-30 00:00     0.00     0.04      0.00    50.00     0.38      -999.00
         2012-09-30 01:00     0.00     0.04      0.00    50.00     0.38      -999.00
         2012-09-30 02:00     0.00     0.04      0.00    50.00     0.38      -999.00
         2012-09-30 03:00     0.00     0.04      0.00    50.00     0.38      -999.00

Answer 1

[dpb]

Your count for the floats is off by one-- there are six, not five. Either read the whole file and just discard any you don't want or use the '*' to ignore a field.

You'll also have better luck with

fmt=['%s%s' repmat('%f',1,6)];

to return the date fields as strings than character. BUT, the better yet would be to use the new(ish) '%D' date conversion field descriptor and return datetime values directly...

>> fmt=['%{yyyy-MM-dd}D' '%{HH:mm}D' repmat('%f',1,6)];
>> frewind(fid)
>> data=textscan(fid,fmt,'collectoutput',1,'headerlines',1)
data = 
    [4x1 datetime]    [4x1 datetime]    [4x6 double]
>>