How to read numerics as strings with readtable?
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I have a table in spreadsheet (xlsx). One of the column is composed of either a numerical number, or several of them, like the below:
2
3
5,7
9
7
4
2,8,9
5
When I use readtable:
T1 = readtable ('Observations.xlsx');
the results are like this:
2
3
NaN
9
7
4
NaN
5
My question is how do I read the info as a string, so that the groups like '5,7', and '2,8,9' are all captured?
I tried:
T1 = readtable ('Observations.xlsx', 'Format','%s %s %s');
But got the below error:
Invalid value for "Format". Must be "auto" for spreadsheet files.
1 Comment
Accepted Answer
Guillaume
on 4 Mar 2020
opts = detectImportOptions(yourfile);
opts = setvartype(opts, whichevervariable, 'string'); %or 'char' if you prefer
data = readtable(yourfile, opts)
Where whichevervariable is a char vector, cell array of char vector, string array containing the name(s) of the variable(s) that must be read as string/char or a numeric vector of variable indices.
2 Comments
Al in St. Louis
on 21 Apr 2021
Given that Mathworks has broken readtable, it's good that they have provided this workaround so that we can keep using our data.
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