Extracting and formatting data from a txt like file

Hello, I have a text file that's actually a .hoc file but I can't figure out how to convert it to a different format so I'm trying to extract data from it. I imported it into Matlab and what i have is cell array. the beginning of each cell has some weird text string that is useless to me, i just want the data after it. e.g.

pt3dadd(90.8322,34.7489,83.0711,1.25825,0)
pt3dadd(90.6025,34.8644,83.3744,1.25825,0)

I need to take those points (actually only the first numbers and put them into a new array. should I try to delete the 'pt3dadd' or is there a way I can read it and then ignore that?

Answer 1

[Cedric]

You can do something like:

 fid = fopen('myFile.hoc', 'r') ;
 content = textscan(fid, 'pt3dadd(%f,%f,%f,%f,%f)') ;
 fclose(fid) ;

and you will have numbers in cell array content.

[Bernard]

I forgot to mention the file has a lot more random text and such so there are headers and other numerical data

[Cedric]

Ok, so the whole file is not completely structured. Then I'd say that regular expressions would be a good option, e.g.:

 % - Read file in one shot.
 buffer  = fileread('myFile.hoc') ;

 % - Extract fields as strings.
 pattern = 'pt3dadd\(([\d\.]+),([\d\.]+),([\d\.]+),([\d\.]+),([\d\.]+)' ;
 content = regexp(buffer, pattern, 'tokens') ;

 % - Restructure cell array and convert to double.
 content = reshape([content{:}], 5, []).' ;
 content = str2double(content) ;

By the way, did you need more information in this previous thread of yours? : http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/84367-ridiculously-simple-nearest-neighbor-search-3d