Search and Parse Variable Length Text Files to Arrays?

Hi Folks,

I could really use some help searching and converting (to array and/or vectors) a particular (but variable length) piece of text that appears in multiple text files.

Here's what a typical file looks like:

Start Time: 0.0  
Time Elapsed: 600.032146474
Initial Position: [-0.17248877882957458, 1.2094972133636475, -0.058800775557756424]
Final Position: [4.5681076049804687, 1.6064592599868774, -4.8270955085754395]
Distance Traveled: 312.929245491
Relative Distance: 6.72382991569
Initial Orientation: [-9.5176773071289062, 3.2656052112579346, 0.30539315938949585]
Final Orientation: [49.040523529052734, -0.74396026134490967, -3.8589010238647461]
Total Angular Movement: 40838.0665952
Relative Change in Rotation: 58.5582008362
Portals Breached:
['sinkPortal', 82.382585985090287]
['cactusPortal', 167.32241884094208]
['bookcasePortal', 262.14078493216317]
['cactusPortal', 269.48917152878369]
['sinkPortal', 383.20171439386849]
['bookcasePortal', 411.92835136867956]
['wellPortal', 457.79343079916583]
['sinkPortal', 466.6405778527718]
['bookcasePortal', 494.15008779048731]
['bookcasePortal', 569.05743781681747]
Objects Visited:
['home', 0.0088714487455838764]
['left home', 20.152287930449265]
['moon', 27.149798996799877]
. . .

What I want to get from these files is just the information that you find between "Portals Breached" and "Objects Visited". The number of entries between those two bits of text varies from file to file. Here's what I want (e.g. two column vectors or one Nx2 array):

sinkPortal              82.382585985090287
cactusPortal           167.32241884094208
bookcasePortal       262.14078493216317
cactusPortal           269.48917152878369
sinkPortal               383.20171439386849
bookcasePortal       411.92835136867956
wellPortal                 457.79343079916583
sinkPortal               466.6405778527718
bookcasePortal       494.15008779048731
bookcasePortal       569.05743781681747

I should note that the number of lines in the text file before "Portals Breached" appears is standard across all the separate text files.

Thanks! Jon

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

Copy your text to file test.txt and run the following code. Note that you may lose precision in NumData comparing to the digits in Data.

fid=fopen('test.txt');
Str=textscan(fid,'%s','delimiter',',');
fclose(fid);

Str=Str{1};
Ind=find(strcmp(Str,'Portals Breached:'));
Str(1:Ind)=[];
Ind=find(strcmp(Str,'Objects Visited:'));
Str(Ind:end)=[];

Name=Str(1:2:end);
Data=Str(2:2:end);

Name=strrep(Name,'[''','');
Name=strrep(Name,'''','')

Data=strrep(Data,']','');
NumData=str2double(Data)

Name = 

      'sinkPortal'
      'cactusPortal'
      'bookcasePortal'
      'cactusPortal'
      'sinkPortal'
      'bookcasePortal'
      'wellPortal'
      'sinkPortal'
      'bookcasePortal'
      'bookcasePortal'

NumData =

     82.3826
    167.3224
    262.1408
    269.4892
    383.2017
    411.9284
    457.7934
    466.6406
    494.1501
    569.0574

[Jon Ericson]

Thank you very much -- that worked perfectly!