Question

Matlab: Convert Cell Array of strings to Array for writing with CSVWrite

Asked by: copiacap

If I run the matlab code attached, it fails because it needs the text to be an array. Is there a fast way to convert that cell array of text to an array of text such that the csvwrite function works? I've tried to find a way to pad all the text cells in the cell array to the same length so I can do cell2mat(text) but I can't find a way to make it work. Thanks

text = {'one' 'two' 'three' 'four' 'five'}'
numbers = [1; 2; 3; 4; 5]
 
csvwrite('C:\temp\temp.csv', [text numbers])

                                  
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Asked On
2008-08-28 at 14:37:39ID23687276
Tags

csvwrite matlab cell array string

Topic

MatLab Programming Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: spickeringPosted on 2008-08-28 at 15:06:08ID: 22340386

Convert text to char array
x = char(text);
csvwrite('C:\temp\temp.csv', [x numbers]);

 

by: copiacapPosted on 2008-08-28 at 18:27:41ID: 22341447

Thanks spickering. That is definitely a step in the right direction. If I execute that I get the following output:

o,n,e,
t,w,o,
t,h,r,e,e,
f,o,u,r,
f,i,v,e,

what I want is:

"one",1
"two",2
"three",3
"four",4
"five",5

or something to that effect (for example I don't mind if there are blanks padded in the strings or no quotes around the strings.

 

by: LukeyJayPosted on 2008-08-29 at 05:17:20ID: 22344583

I don't have matlab in front of me, but try something like this:

for k = 1:size(text,1)
   csvwrite('C:\temp\temp.csv', [text{k} num2str(numbers(k))]);
end

That might work for you.

Luke

 

by: copiacapPosted on 2008-08-29 at 06:11:06ID: 22344967

That still doesn't work (although it fixes one issue). It gives the following output:

o,n,e,1
t,w,o,2
t,h,r,e,e,3
f,o,u,r,4
f,i,v,e,5

For now I've done the following hack which outputs a file with commas that I strip out using python and * as delimiters which I replace with commas. So maybe Matlab just can't handle this type of task although it's amazing to me no one has run into this before when loading large data sets, working on them and then wanting to spit out large data sets to load quickly into a database.

 

by: spickeringPosted on 2008-08-30 at 22:05:48ID: 22354100

This should work for you.

out = strcat(text,',',num2str(numbers));
writeOut = char(out);
dlmwrite('myfile.csv', writeOut, 'delimiter', '');

just trim it on your import into your database

 

by: copiacapPosted on 2008-09-02 at 08:07:23ID: 22367980

Maybe I don't know what you mean by trim it on my import. The output that generates is:

o,n,e,,,1, ,
t,w,o,,,2, ,
t,h,r,e,e,,,3
f,o,u,r,,,4,
f,i,v,e,,,5,

Still requires some other process to format that properly

 

by: michalpmPosted on 2008-11-05 at 11:26:45ID: 22888827

% Output format (stored in csv file):
%   one,1    - or -   'one',1
%   two,2             'two',2
text = {'one' 'two' 'three' 'four' 'five'}';
numbers = [1; 2; 3; 4; 5];
 
filename = 'C:\temp\temp.csv';
fido=fopen(filename,'w');
for(i=1:length(numbers))
    fprintf(fido,'%s,%s',char(text(i)),num2str(numbers(i)));
    % If you would like single quotes around the text, the code would be:
    % fprintf(fido,'\''%s\'',%s',char(text(i)),num2str(numbers(i)));
    fprintf(fido,'\r\n');
end
fclose(fido);
                                              
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