Importing only a fraction of a database using dataset

I have a large dataset in csv format (400MB). How can I import in MatLab only the first 500 rows?

[Sebastiano delre]

Actually csvread does not work for me because my data contain not only numerical variables. I have also strings and cells. Is there a way I can use the function dataset?

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

nc=6; % Number of column in your csv file
nr=500  
data=csvread('file.csv',0,0,[0 0 nr-1 nc-1])

[Sebastiano delre]

Thank you very much!

[Sebastiano delre]

Actually csvread does not work for me because my data contain not only numerical variables. I have also strings and cells. Is there a way I can use the function dataset?

[Walter Roberson]

xlsread() accepts range arguments.

You have R2013b according to your other postings; you could consider readtable() . I do not know how fast that would be; I seem to remember later releases made it faster.

[Sebastiano delre]

Actually I have R2014b now. readtable() works fine and it is very very fast. Thanks!