define formatspec to export cell arrays using fprintf

Question

I want to export several cell arrays of string to a text file, using a loop, in a way very similar to the one explained in the following link:

http://www.mathworks.com/examples/matlab/1107-export-cell-array-to-text-file

The only difference is that everyone of the arrays has a different number of columns and I don't know how to tell formatspec to create that number of columns for each array in every iteration of the loop.

I need a command that tells

if myarray has 2 columns
formatSpec = '%s %s';
else if myarray has 3 columns
formatSpec = '%s %s %s\n';
else
...

I tried to simply set formatspec to 10 columns as the arrays don't contain more than that, but then the output file isn't organized in rows.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Ben · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-11 18:14:47Z

0

What about something like this:

%// Get number of columns
NumCol = size(myarray,2)

%// Define basic format spec to be repeated
baseString = ['%s'];

%// Generate actual formatSpec to be used
formatSpec = repmat(baseString,1,NumCol)

%// Add \n at the end
out = fprintf([formatSpec '\n'],myarray)

You could modify this and include it in an if-else or switch/case block if you want but that should be general enough.

answered Apr 11, 2015 at 18:14

Ben

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2 Comments

Gustavo Zambrano Over a year ago

thanks for your answer! I found a mistake when defining the format. inline baseString = ['%s ']; %add a space in the format inline formatSpec = repmat(baseString,1,NumCol-1) inline out = fprintf([formatSpec '%s\r\n'],myarray) %Althought, I'm still struggling to get the output separated in lines

Gustavo Zambrano Over a year ago

Actually, the problem was solved with this amendment.

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