How do I extract a matrix from a .txt file?

Hello, I have a .txt file that looks like this, but with 38 lines in total:

1000.000000 -0.001345 -2.026022 789.652283 -0.001083 -2.025641 623.550720 -0.000872 -2.025440 492.388245 -0.000713 -2.025386

I am getting my PhD in Geophysics and this is my first semester, and I know nothing about Matlab. I would ideally like to create a color contour filled plot of the phase data, which is the second column of the above data, vs. frequency which is the first column. How do I go about doing this? I was looking at the contourf function, however I don't even know how to extract a matrix from the .txt file. Please help!

Ashley

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

if it has really that format a dlmread should do the job:

A = dlmread('yourfile.txt',' ');

So when copy pasting your values into a txt and use dlmread I get:

>> A = dlmread('yourfile.txt',' ');
>> A

A =

     1.0e+03 *

    Columns 1 through 7

      1.0000   -0.0000   -0.0020    0.7897   -0.0000   -0.0020    0.6236

    Columns 8 through 12

     -0.0000   -0.0020    0.4924   -0.0000   -0.0020