delete consecutive commas in txt file

I have the next txt file that has more than one ',' between numbers and i only want 1 comma between my numbers

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

0.00443747926701899,0.0415007916135113,0.0507606123682882,,0.118547629187242,,,,,,,,,0.300291185258514,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,0.410219670837715,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,0.698099828162265

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Stephen23]

What should happen with lines that only contain commas: do you want to keep them, or remove them?

[george korris]

@Stephen23thank you for your time.

remove them!

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Use readmatrix with additional name-value pair arguments to select the delimiter and combine multiple consecutive delimiters. See the documentation section on Text Files Only for details on these and other Name-Value Arguments.

M1 = readmatrix('https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/1122645/ca.txt', 'Delimiter',',', 'ConsecutiveDelimitersRule','join', 'LeadingDelimitersRule','ignore')

M1 = 8×9

0.0044 0.0415 0.0508 0.1185 0.1397 0.2522 0.3003 0.4102 0.6981 0.0361 0.1039 0.1559 0.1819 0.2685 0.4436 0.5813 0.8723 1.2182 0.0766 0.2214 0.2013 0.3533 0.5310 0.9182 1.1550 1.4976 1.9698 0.0721 0.5354 0.6176 0.6157 1.2760 1.7109 1.9629 2.4014 2.9319 0.2162 0.2679 1.3769 1.7134 2.1104 2.6804 3.0724 3.2769 4.0396 1.4989 1.6092 2.2079 2.4976 2.7068 3.8842 3.8599 4.3714 4.6691 1.7589 2.4418 2.3176 3.3207 3.0543 4.3723 4.3590 4.6367 4.8807 0.1454 2.1400 2.5672 3.5504 3.3989 4.4617 4.5724 5.0063 4.9371

.

[george korris]

Why do i get an 6 by 9 array when i should get an 8 by 9 one @Star Strider?

Thank you for the reply!

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!

Because I forgot to add 'LeadingDelimitersRule','ignore' that I just now did (after looking at the text of the file with fileread and seeing the problem).

[george korris]

Thank you so much @Star Strider!!! You are amazing!!!!!

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

Thank you!

Answer 2

[Simon Chan]

May be this:

rawdata = readlines('https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/1122645/ca.txt');
iwant = [];
for k = 1:length(rawdata)
    data = str2double(strsplit(rawdata{k},','));
    if ~all(isnan(data))
        iwant = [iwant;data];
    end
end
iwant

iwant = 8×9

0.0044 0.0415 0.0508 0.1185 0.1397 0.2522 0.3003 0.4102 0.6981 0.0361 0.1039 0.1559 0.1819 0.2685 0.4436 0.5813 0.8723 1.2182 0.0766 0.2214 0.2013 0.3533 0.5310 0.9182 1.1550 1.4976 1.9698 0.0721 0.5354 0.6176 0.6157 1.2760 1.7109 1.9629 2.4014 2.9319 0.2162 0.2679 1.3769 1.7134 2.1104 2.6804 3.0724 3.2769 4.0396 1.4989 1.6092 2.2079 2.4976 2.7068 3.8842 3.8599 4.3714 4.6691 1.7589 2.4418 2.3176 3.3207 3.0543 4.3723 4.3590 4.6367 4.8807 0.1454 2.1400 2.5672 3.5504 3.3989 4.4617 4.5724 5.0063 4.9371

[george korris]

Hi @Simon Chan when i run your code in my pc i get the following error:

Unrecognized function or variable 'readlines'.

Thank you for your time!

Answer 3

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

maybe not the best code but seems to do the job !

filename = 'ca.txt';

a = readlines(filename);
[m,~] = size(a);
count = 0;

for ci = 1:m
    current_line = char(a(ci,:));
    out_comas= strfind(current_line,',');

    if numel(out_comas) < numel(current_line)  % keep this line 
        count = count+1;
        % remove extra comma separators
        out_comas= strfind(current_line,',');
        d = [0 diff(out_comas)];
        ind = find(d == 1);

        line_out = current_line;
        line_out(out_comas(ind)) = [];% remove extra comma separators
        C{count,1} = line_out;

    end

end

% export to txt file
writecell(C,'ca_out.txt',"QuoteStrings",false)

[george korris]

Hi @Mathieu NOE when i run your code in my pc i get the following error:

Unrecognized function or variable 'readlines'.

Thank you for your time!

[Torsten]

Then you are not up-to-date: It was introduced in R2020b

[george korris]

:(

[Mathieu NOE]

@george korris

here a workaround :

function lines = my_readlines(filename)
    % work around for earlier matlab releases (not having readlines)
    lines = regexp(fileread(filename), '\r?\n', 'split');
    if isempty(lines{end}); lines(end) = []; end  %end of file correction

end

[george korris]

Thank you very much!!!