how to extract number from a .dat file and assign it to an excel sheet cell?

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I am using Fluent to extract surface integral values that are saved with a significant amount of text and the required numerical value. It looks like the following :
"Surface Integral Report"
Average of Surface Vertex Values
Wall Shear Stress (pascal)
-------------------------------- --------------------
wall 0.047597805
I would like to write a code to extract this numerical value, '0.047597805' from above .dat file and save it into a cell in an excel sheet ('.csv' or '.xlsx'). Please help!!

Accepted Answer

Bhaskar R
Bhaskar R on 3 Feb 2020
Edited: Bhaskar R on 3 Feb 2020
Assuming your a.dat file is with data
"Surface Integral Report"
Average of Surface Vertex Values
Wall Shear Stress (pascal)
-------------------------------- --------------------
wall 0.047597805
Then your code
T = readtable('a.dat'); % read data to table
T.Properties.VariableNames = {'Wall_Shear_Stress', 'pascal'}; % modify variable names
writetable(T, 'Reposrt.csv'); % write to csv/excel file
  3 Comments
Bhaskar R
Bhaskar R on 3 Feb 2020
Edited: Bhaskar R on 3 Feb 2020
num_files = <number of .dat files you want to put in loop>
data = zeros(num_files, 1); % matrix is recommended instead of cell as require
for ii =1:num_files
file_name = <process your file path here > % e.g: file_name = fullfile(folder_path, sprintf('a%d.dat',ii)) assuming your filenames as a1.dat, a2.dat, a3.dat...
ext_data = readmatrix(file_name) % read file
data(ii) = ext_data(2); % first value you would get NaN beacuse of text field
end
writematrix(data, 'Reposrt.csv' ) % write data to csv file
Adarsh Vasa
Adarsh Vasa on 3 Feb 2020
Thank you so much. It worked like a beauty. I got late in responding as I had to upgrade to the 2019 version, in order to use readmatrix function. Thanks again.

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