Generate Cell Array of Multiple Rows and Columns From Text File

Question

I have a text file formatted like this:

ab cd ef gh ij
ab cd ef gh ij
ab cd ef gh ij

How can I import this data into Matlab so that it is stored as a cell array that is equivalent to this 3x5 cell array:

C = {
    ['ab'], ['cd'], ['ef'], ['gh'], ['ij'];
    ['ab'], ['cd'], ['ef'], ['gh'], ['ij'];
    ['ab'], ['cd'], ['ef'], ['gh'], ['ij'];
    };

I can modify the text file to contain some sort of "end-of-line" indicator if needed. I tried using textscan, but can't figure out how to get it to format the variable as described.

EDIT: Changed the accepted answer; I like the handling of potentially missing data points in Divakar's answer.

Answer 1

See if this works for you -

c1 = cellfun(@(x) strsplit(x),importdata(textfile_path),'un',0);
C = vertcat(c1{:})

This basically reads the text data into a cell array which is run through strsplit to split the data into cells and rest is just re-arranging the data to get the desired output.

Instead of strsplit, you can use regexp there -

c1 = regexp(importdata(textfile_path),'\s','split'); %// As suggested by Luis!

---

Bonus stuff

Let's suppose you have an "irregular" shaped text file i.e. to say, some data is missing along the columns at the trailing positions, something like this -

ab cd ef gh ij
ab ry mf pp
ab ui rt ko bw

In that case, you can use a modified version of the earlier code -

c1 = cellfun(@(x) strsplit(x),importdata(textfile_path),'un',0);
lens = cellfun('length',c1);

C = cell(max(lens),numel(c1));
C(bsxfun(@le,[1:max(lens)]',lens')) = [c1{:}];
C = C'

The output stays committed to that 2D structure, keeping empty cells for the empty places -

C = 
    'ab'    'cd'    'ef'    'gh'    'ij'
    'ab'    'ry'    'mf'    'pp'      []
    'ab'    'ui'    'rt'    'ko'    'bw'