dlmwrite -append problems when writing char and numbers to .txt file

I am having troubles trying to write a mix of char and numbers to a delimited file.

I did read on this thread: http://www.mathworks.gr/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/235444

that dlmwrite cannot handle both char and num and must use a cell array and thus dlmwrite treats each char as a separate element and places a delimiter between each char and number.

basically what i am doing is reading in a large csv files with mix of char and numbers and sorting through the file line by line and only copying the lines that are for the same location (based on a unique id code) to a new file. the data is a mixed bag of temp for all the met stations in tanzania.

example line from my data: "TANZANIA,UNITED REPUBLIC OF",TZ03MSKR,,MUSEKERA,-9.3,33.6,12,1/1/1943,139

once found, i want to copy the exact line to a new file. most importantly i need to append each line to the existing file as my original file is for 35+ years of monthly readings for each 129 different stations.

i got everything working except the append part.

essentially its the same problem as this

filename = 'C:\test.txt';
str = 'test123';
dlmwrite(filename, str, '-append')

returns
t,e,s,t,1,2,3

i was wondering if anyone can help point out a workaround that is different from the quoted thread or is this the best method?

Thanx.

Answer 1

[Oleg Komarov]

If you have an example input as, use fprintf:

out = {'"TANZANIA,UNITED REPUBLIC OF"','TZ03MSKR','MUSEKERA',-9.3,33.6,12,'1/1/1943',139
       '"My Republic"','TZ03MSKR','MUSEKERA',3,3.6,1,'1/21/1941',111};

out = out.';
fid = fopen('test.csv','a');
fprintf(fid,'%s,%s,%s,%f,%f,%f,%s,%f\r\n',out{:});
fid = fclose(fid);

[nori]

thanx Oleg!

the fprintf worked perfectly.

thanx a bunch.