Importing text files with comments in MATLAB

Question

Is there any character or character combination that MATLAB interprets as comments, when importing data from text files? Being that when it detects it at the beginning of a

Answer 1

Actually, your data is not consistent, as you must have the same number of column for each line.

1)

Apart from that, using '%' as comments will be correctly recognized by importdata:

file.dat

%12 31
12 32
32 22
%abc
13 33
31 33
%lffffdd
77 7
66 6
%33 33
12 31
31 23

matlab

data = importdata('file.dat')

2)

Otherwise use textscan to specify arbitrary comment symbols:

file2.dat

//12 31
12 32
32 22
//abc
13 33
31 33
//lffffdd
77 7
66 6
//33 33
12 31
31 23

matlab

fid = fopen('file2.dat');
data = textscan(fid, '%f %f', 'CommentStyle','//', 'CollectOutput',true);
data = cell2mat(data);
fclose(fid);