matlab textscan

MATLAB's textscan function is used to read formatted data from a text file or string. It is similar to the fscanf function but is more flexible and can handle different data types and delimiters.

The syntax for textscan is:

C = textscan(fileID, formatSpec)
C = textscan(filename, formatSpec)
C = textscan(___, Name, Value)
[C1, C2, ..., Cn] = textscan(___)

where fileID is the file identifier returned by fopen, filename is the name of the file, formatSpec is a string specifying the format of the data, and Name-Value pairs are optional arguments that modify the behavior of the function.

The textscan function returns a cell array C where each cell contains a vector of data parsed from the file. The number of cells in C depends on the number of output arguments specified in the function call.

For example, if the file contains the following data:

1,John,Doe,24
2,Jane,Smith,28
3,Bob,Johnson,32

We can use textscan to read this data into a cell array:

fileID = fopen('data.txt');
C = textscan(fileID, '%d,%s,%s,%d');
fclose(fileID);

Here, the formatSpec string specifies that the data contains an integer, followed by two strings, followed by another integer, separated by commas. The resulting cell array C will contain four cells: the first and fourth cells will contain vectors of integers, and the second and third cells will contain vectors of strings.