Textscan on tab delimited file in MATLAB

Please I require help to make this code output the content of a file after inserting a tab and a & in-between the elements:

%Open file for reading

[FileName,PathName,FilterIndex] = uigetfile('*', 'Select the input file');
if FilterIndex
    FileName = strcat(PathName,FileName);
    fid = fopen(FileName);
    temp = textscan(fid, '%d\t %s\t %10.6f\t %10.6f\t %10.6f\t %10.6f\n');
    tmpstr1 = temp(1);
    tmpstr2 = temp(2);
    tmpstr3 = temp(3);
    tmpstr4 = temp(4);
    tmpstr5 = temp(5);
    fclose(fid);

fid = fopen('MetabsArranged.txt', 'w');
A = [tmpstr1 tmpstr2 tmpstr3 tmpstr4 tmpstr5];

for k = 1:size(A)

      fprintf(fid, '%d\t &\t %s\t &\t %10.6f\t &\t %10.6f\t &\t %10.6f\t &\t %10.6f\n',A{k});

end

fclose(fid)
end

Input example- a txt file:

1    Sugar    3.13E-01    4.38E-01    4.38E-01    2.19E-01
2    Histidine    6.25E-02    1.88E-01    6.25E-02    6.25E-02

Output required:

1 & Sugar & 3.13E-01 & 4.38E-01 & 4.38E-01 & 2.19E-01
2 & Histidine & 6.25E-02  & 1.88E-01 & 6.25E-02 &   6.25E-02

[Jan]

Please format your code, such that it is readable. See: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/13205-tutorial-how-to-format-your-question-with-markup

Did you read the "Markup help" link? If not, why?

It seems to be very hard for beginners to format the code. It would be helpful, if you describe your problems in: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/12556-how-can-code-formatting-be-made-more-intuitive-for-newcomers

What does "unable to get the code to work" mean exactly? Do you get an error - which message? Does the output differ from the expectations?

Answer 1

[Jan]

"for k = 1:size(A)" is a bug: SIZE replied a vector. Either use LENGTH, NUMEL or specify the dimension like "SIZE(A, dim)".

As far as I understand, you can read the complete file as string and convert all tabs to "tab&tab" - correct?

Str = fread(fid_in, Inf, 'char');
Str = strrep(Str, sprintf('\t'), sprintf('\t&\t'));
fprintf(fid_out, '%s', Str);

[James]

Hi,

I apologise for posting my code unformated - I was having some issues with the internet and web pages not displaying properly and very frustrating as well. I promise to abide by the rules and thanks for pointing them out to me.

Thank you very much for the corrections on the code. The code now works beautifully. I would be happy if you could explain to me more why "LENGTH, NUMEL or specify the dimension like "SIZE(A, dim)" might be better than SIZE in that situation.

Best wishes,

James