How to read values from a table or Excel File and assign it to a variable ?

Hello, I am writing a MATLAB code for the design of a Horn Antenna. In the process, the code is supposed to read values from a table (or an excel file). To make it more clear, let us assume I have a table of two variables "a" & "b". The value of "a" is to be entered by the user and based on the value entered, the code is supposed to look up the table/or an excel file for a corresponding value of "b" and assign it to "b". How do I do it ?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

for a corresponding value of "b" and assign it to "b"?

[Ramann Mantha]

I'm sorry, I meant to say that depending on the value of "a" entered by the user, the code is supposed to find the corresponding value of "b" from the table ! Hope this clears the confusion !

Answer 1

[Benjamin Avants]

You'll have to load the whole table into memory and then search column a for an entry that matches the user input. Then you use the index of a to get the value for b.

To load the table into memory, use the MATLAB function xlsread.

data = xlsread('myFile.xls')

There are options to restrict how xlsread opens the file if you need to read specific ranges of cells or cells that include text. Look up the documentation if necessary.

The above function call is assumed to work and the file contains two columns "a" and "b".

Finding your "a" value would be something like this:

index = data(:,1) == a;

and saving your "b" value would work like this:

b = data(index,2);

In this case, if "a" exists more than once in the data, you'll get an array of "b"s associated with those "a"s. You can combine the above lines like this:

b = data(data(:,1) == a,2);

[Nikhilesh Gandhre]

what if there is column c and d?then will this work?