I would like to use matlab to add information from a .dat file to existing MatLab variables

I have a simulation that outputs a report in the .dat file format. I would like a piece of code that can use two line near the top of the script to determine where the file should be added and saved.

Then I want the code to take all the values and pout them into the correct variable so I can plot the graph as I go. The two lines that determine where the data should be added are as follows

*Mesh Parameters*

Elements average length: 5
Fibres direction elemements factor: 4

The lines with usable data are as follows

Delta: 15
****************
*Average Values*
****************
E11                  E22                    E33                  G12                    G23                  G13                   nu12                 nu23                      nu13
mean        std      mean       std         mean       std       mean       std         mean       std       mean       std         mean       std       mean       std           mean         std
3.0214E+05 1.1563E+03 1.0628E+05 8.9269E+02 1.0676E+05 1.4210E+03 8.6614E+04 3.4647E+02 4.5477E+04 5.0063E+02 6.2538E+04 1.5696E+03 1.9722E-01 1.3478E-03 2.5901E-01 3.1920E-03    2.1379E-01   3.0072E-03 
ID: 1
E11         E22        E33        G23       G13        G12       nu23       nu13        nu12
3.0326E+05 1.0676E+05 1.0670E+05 4.5890E+04 6.3525E+04 8.6842E+04 2.6055E-01 2.1248E-01 1.9705E-01

I would like to be able to extract the values below ID: 1 and ignore the mean and std values.

Delta: 15
****************
*Average Values*
****************
---
ID: 1
---
ID: 2
---
ID: 3

The second piece of code is repeated multple times in the .dat file as highlighted above.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

try this

the text file used for my code is attached

hope it helps

filename = 'text.txt';

D=readlines(filename);           % read as string array

%% 1/ get *Mesh Parameters*
tmp = split(D(contains(D,'Elements average length')),':');
Elements_average_length = str2num(tmp(2));

tmp = split(D(contains(D,'Fibres direction elemements factor')),':');
Fibres_direction_elemements_factor = str2num(tmp(2));

%% 2/ get data 
% first block of 4 lines 
idx = find(contains(D,'Delta:'))
L4 = D(idx:idx+3);

% blocks of ID data (labels, values)
idx = find(contains(D,'ID:'))
Ldata = D(idx(1):idx(end)+2);

%  export to text file 
out = [L4;Ldata];
writematrix(out,'out.txt');

% for information / use ? 
for ci =1:numel(idx)
    
    labels{ci} = split(D(idx+1));
    values{ci} = str2double(split(D(idx+2)));

end

[A Poyser]

Thanks, very useful

[Mathieu NOE]

My pleasure !