getting a specific paragraph from a .txt file

This might sound like a stupid question, but is there was way of retrieving a specific paragraph from a .txt file please? I've written the conditions for various experiments in a txt file, so like

test1
-
-

test2
-
-

and so on. I was wondering if I could say get the user to input the test number (on a gui) and then use a strcat function to merge test and the number and then somehow retrieve the paragraph that corresponds to that number so I can then display it on the gui. Is there a way of doing that please?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

filecontent = fileread('YourFile.txt');

testnum = 2;

par_begin_pos = regexp(filecontent, sprintf('^test%d', testnum), 'lineanchors');
if isempty(par_begin_pos)
  fprintf('No paragraph #%d in file', testnum);
  return
end
par_end_pos = regexp(filecontent, sprintf('^test%d', testnum+1), 'lineanchors');
if isempty(par_end_pos)
  par_end_pos = length(filecontent) + 1;    %right test was last thing in file
end

paragraph_content = filecontent(par_begin_pos : par_end_pos - 1);

[Jamie Shelley]

Thank you!

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

You can use regexp

[Jamie Shelley]

Thanks but what is that please?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

doc regexp