How to read a file with both decimal and hex/binary values in MATLAB

Question

Say you have a simple text file which contains many columns. Some columns are decimal values already. Some are hexadecimal. Those columns are known.

test.txt >>

1.4 1.9 21 0030 0D12
0.3 3.3 91 FFFF 1111

I want to read the first three columns as decimal, and read the last two columns as hex.

Can this be done easily?

Thanks!

Eitan T · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-25 00:00:36Z

1

It can easily be done by textread. For your example, just do:

[col1, col2, col3, col4, col5] = textread('myfile.txt', '%f %f %f %s %s');

This will read the decimal values normally, and treat the hexadecimal values as strings.

If you further wish to convert the strings into decimal values as well, use hex2dec with cellfun:

[col4, col5] = cellfun(@hex2dec, col4, col5);

Hope this helps.

answered Aug 25, 2012 at 0:00

Eitan T

33k14 gold badges77 silver badges111 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

fgp · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-25 00:02:44Z

0

You can use fscanf. Are the hexadecimal values supposed to be all positive? If so, you may scan it like this:

fscanf(file_id,'%f %f %d %x %x')

answered Aug 25, 2012 at 0:02

fgp

4282 silver badges6 bronze badges