Overview
Low-level file I/O functions allow the most control over reading or writing data to a file. However, these functions require that you specify more detailed information about your file than the easier-to-use high-level functions, such as importdata
. For more information on the high-level functions that read text files, see Ways to Import Text Files.
If the high-level functions cannot import your data, use one of the following:
-
fscanf
, which reads formatted data in a text or ASCII file; that is, a file you can view in a text editor. For more information, see Reading Data in a Formatted Pattern. -
fgetl
andfgets
, which read one line of a file at a time, where a newline character separates each line. For more information, see Reading Data Line-by-Line. -
fread
, which reads a stream of data at the byte or bit level. For more information, see Import Binary Data with Low-Level I/O.
For additional information, see:
Note: The low-level file I/O functions are based on functions in the ANSI® Standard C Library. However, MATLAB® includes vectorized versions of the functions, to read and write data in an array with minimal control loops.
Reading Data in a Formatted Pattern
To import text files that importdata
and textscan
cannot read, consider using fscanf
. The fscanf
function requires that you describe the format of your file, but includes many options for this format description.
For example, create a text file mymeas.dat
as shown. The data in mymeas.dat
includes repeated sets of times, dates, and measurements. The header text includes the number of sets of measurements, N
:
Measurement Data N=3 12:00:00 01-Jan-1977 4.21 6.55 6.78 6.55 9.15 0.35 7.57 NaN 7.92 8.49 7.43 7.06 9.59 9.33 3.92 0.31 09:10:02 23-Aug-1990 2.76 6.94 4.38 1.86 0.46 3.17 NaN 4.89 0.97 9.50 7.65 4.45 8.23 0.34 7.95 6.46 15:03:40 15-Apr-2003 7.09 6.55 9.59 7.51 7.54 1.62 3.40 2.55 NaN 1.19 5.85 5.05 6.79 4.98 2.23 6.99
Opening the File
As with any of the low-level I/O functions, before reading, open the file with fopen
, and obtain a file identifier. By default, fopen
opens files for read access, with a permission of 'r'
.
When you finish processing the file, close it with fclose
(
.fid
)
Describing the Data
Describe the data in the file with format specifiers, such as '%s'
for text, '%d'
for an integer, or '%f'
for a floating-point number. (For a complete list of specifiers, see the fscanf
reference page.)
To skip literal characters in the file, include them in the format description. To skip a data field, use an asterisk ('*'
) in the specifier.
For example, consider the header lines of mymeas.dat
:
Measurement Data % skip the first 2 words, go to next line: %*s %*s\n N=3 % ignore 'N=', read integer: N=%d\n % go to next line: \n 12:00:00 01-Jan-1977 4.21 6.55 6.78 6.55 ...
To read the headers and return the single value for N
:
N = fscanf(fid, '%*s %*s\nN=%d\n\n', 1);
Specifying the Number of Values to Read
By default, fscanf
reapplies your format description until it cannot match the description to the data, or it reaches the end of the file.
Optionally, specify the number of values to read, so that fscanf
does not attempt to read the entire file. For example, in mymeas.dat
, each set of measurements includes a fixed number of rows and columns:
measrows = 4; meascols = 4; meas = fscanf(fid, '%f', [measrows, meascols])';
Creating Variables in the Workspace
There are several ways to store mymeas.dat
in the MATLAB workspace. In this case, read the values into a structure. Each element of the structure has three fields: mtime
, mdate
, and meas
.
Note:
fscanf
fills arrays with numeric values in column order. To make the output array match the orientation of numeric data in a file, transpose the array.
filename = 'mymeas.dat'; measrows = 4; meascols = 4; % open the file fid = fopen(filename); % read the file headers, find N (one value) N = fscanf(fid, '%*s %*s\nN=%d\n\n', 1); % read each set of measurements for n = 1:N mystruct(n).mtime = fscanf(fid, '%s', 1); mystruct(n).mdate = fscanf(fid, '%s', 1); % fscanf fills the array in column order, % so transpose the results mystruct(n).meas = ... fscanf(fid, '%f', [measrows, meascols])'; end % close the file fclose(fid);
Reading Data Line-by-Line
MATLAB provides two functions that read lines from files and store them as character vectors: fgetl
and fgets
. The fgets
function copies the line along with the newline character to the output, but fgetl
does not.
The following example uses fgetl
to read an entire file one line at a time. The function litcount
determines whether a given character sequence (literal
) appears in each line. If it does, the function prints the entire line preceded by the number of times the literal appears on the line.
function y = litcount(filename, literal) % Count the number of times a given literal appears in each line. fid = fopen(filename); y = 0; tline = fgetl(fid); while ischar(tline) matches = strfind(tline, literal); num = length(matches); if num > 0 y = y + num; fprintf(1,'%d:%s\n',num,tline); end tline = fgetl(fid); end fclose(fid);
Create an input data file called badpoem
:
Oranges and lemons, Pineapples and tea. Orangutans and monkeys, Dragonflys or fleas.
To find out how many times 'an'
appears in this file, call litcount
:
litcount('badpoem','an')
This returns:
2: Oranges and lemons, 1: Pineapples and tea. 3: Orangutans and monkeys, ans = 6
Testing for End of File (EOF)
When you read a portion of your data at a time, you can use feof
to check whether you have reached the end of the file. feof
returns a value of 1
when the file pointer is at the end of the file. Otherwise, it returns 0
.
Note: Opening an empty file does not move the file position indicator to the end of the file. Read operations, and the
fseek
andfrewind
functions, move the file position indicator.
Testing for EOF with feof
When you use textscan
, fscanf
, or fread
to read portions of data at a time, use feof
to check whether you have reached the end of the file.
For example, suppose that the hypothetical file mymeas.dat
has the following form, with no information about the number of measurement sets. Read the data into a structure with fields for mtime
, mdate
, and meas
:
12:00:00 01-Jan-1977 4.21 6.55 6.78 6.55 9.15 0.35 7.57 NaN 7.92 8.49 7.43 7.06 9.59 9.33 3.92 0.31 09:10:02 23-Aug-1990 2.76 6.94 4.38 1.86 0.46 3.17 NaN 4.89 0.97 9.50 7.65 4.45 8.23 0.34 7.95 6.46
To read the file:
filename = 'mymeas.dat'; measrows = 4; meascols = 4; % open the file fid = fopen(filename); % make sure the file is not empty finfo = dir(filename); fsize = finfo.bytes; if fsize > 0 % read the file block = 1; while ~feof(fid) mystruct(block).mtime = fscanf(fid, '%s', 1); mystruct(block).mdate = fscanf(fid, '%s', 1); % fscanf fills the array in column order, % so transpose the results mystruct(block).meas = ... fscanf(fid, '%f', [measrows, meascols])'; block = block + 1; end end % close the file fclose(fid);
Testing for EOF with fgetl and fgets
If you use fgetl
or fgets
in a control loop, feof
is not always the best way to test for end of file. As an alternative, consider checking whether the value that fgetl
or fgets
returns is a character vector.
For example, the function litcount
described in Reading Data Line-by-Line includes the following while
loop and fgetl
calls :
y = 0; tline = fgetl(fid); while ischar(tline) matches = strfind(tline, literal); num = length(matches); if num > 0 y = y + num; fprintf(1,'%d:%s\n',num,tline); end tline = fgetl(fid); end
This approach is more robust than testing ~feof(fid)
for two reasons:
-
If
fgetl
orfgets
find data, they return a character vector. Otherwise, they return a number (-1
). -
After each read operation,
fgetl
andfgets
check the next character in the file for the end-of-file marker. Therefore, these functions sometimes set the end-of-file indicator before they return a value of-1
. For example, consider the following three-line text file. Each of the first two lines ends with a newline character, and the third line contains only the end-of-file marker:123 456
Three sequential calls to
fgetl
yield the following results:t1 = fgetl(fid); % t1 = '123', feof(fid) = false t2 = fgetl(fid); % t2 = '456', feof(fid) = true t3 = fgetl(fid); % t3 = -1, feof(fid) = true
This behavior does not conform to the ANSI specifications for the related C language functions.
Opening Files with Different Character Encodings
Encoding schemes support the characters required for particular alphabets, such as those for Japanese or European languages. Common encoding schemes include US-ASCII or UTF-8.
If you do not specify an encoding scheme, fopen
opens files for processing using the default encoding for your system. To determine the default, open a file, and call fopen
again with the syntax:
[filename, permission, machineformat, encoding] = fopen(fid);
If you specify an encoding scheme when you open a file, the following functions apply that scheme: fscanf
, fprintf
, fgetl
, fgets
, fread
, and fwrite
.
For a complete list of supported encoding schemes, and the syntax for specifying the encoding, see the fopen
reference page.