Development Environment    

Exporting ASCII Data

MATLAB supports several ways to export data in many different ASCII formats. For example, you may want to export a MATLAB matrix as text file where the rows and columns are represented as space-separated, numeric values.

This section describes how to use MATLAB functions to export data in several common ASCII formats, including:

The function you use depends on the amount of data you want to export and its format.

If you are not sure which section describes your data, scan the data format samples in Table 6-3 and look for the sample that most nearly matches the data format you want to create. Then, read the section referred to in the table.

If you are familiar with MATLAB export function but not sure when to use them, view Table 6-4, which compares the features of each function.

Table 6-3: ASCII Data File Formats and MATLAB Export Commands

Data Format Sample
 MATLAB Export Function
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
 See Exporting Delimited ASCII Data Files and Using the diary Command to Export Data for information about these options.
1; 2; 3; 4; 5;
6; 7; 8; 9; 10;
 See Exporting Delimited ASCII Data Files for more information. The example shows a semicolon-delimited file but you can specify other characters as the delimiter.
Table 6-4: ASCII Data Export Function Feature Comparison

Function
 Use With
 Delimiters
 Notes
diary
 Numeric data or cell array
 Only spaces
 Can be used for small arrays. Requires editing of data file to remove extraneous text.
dlmwrite
 Numeric data
 Any character
 Easy to use, flexible.
fprintf
 Alphabetic and numeric data
 Any character
 Part of low-level file I/O routines. Most flexible command but most difficult to use. Requires use of fopen to obtain file identifier and fclose after write.
save
 Numeric data
 Tabs or spaces
 Easy to use; output values are high precision.

 Importing Mixed Alphabetic and Numeric Data Exporting Delimited ASCII Data Files