Matlab: How to read in numbers with a comma as decimal separator?

Question

I have a whole lot (hundreds of thousands) of rather large (>0.5MB) files, where data are numerical, but with a comma as decimal separator. It\'s impractical for me to use a

Answer 1

My solution (assumes commas are only used as decimal place holders and that white space delineates columns):

fid = fopen("FILENAME");
indat = fread(fid, '*char');
fclose(fid);
indat = strrep(indat, ',', '.');
[colA, colB] = strread(indat, '%f %f');

If you should happen to need to remove a single header line, as I did, then this should work:

fid = fopen("FILENAME");                  %Open file
indat = fread(fid, '*char');              %Read in the entire file as characters
fclose(fid);                              %Close file
indat = strrep(indat, ',', '.');          %Replace commas with periods
endheader=strfind(indat,13);              %Find first newline
indat=indat(endheader+1:size(indat,2));   %Extract all characters after first new line
[colA, colB] = strread(indat, '%f %f');   %Convert string to numerical data