Extracting data from text file

I have a text file (attached). I am trying to extract a specific part (Nodes part) starting by reading the header (nodal.coordinates) then extract the following four columns (node name, x, y and z). I am trying textscan ad cell2mat functions but I got an empty matrix. Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Method one: TEXTSCAN:

fmt = '%s%f%f%f';
opt = {'MultipleDelimsAsOne',true, 'CollectOutput',true, 'HeaderLines',1};
fid = fopen('sampleQ.txt','rt');
while ~feof(fid) && ~strcmp(fgetl(fid),'nodal.coordinates')
end
out = textscan(fid,fmt,opt{:});
fclose(fid);
out{:}

ans = 8×1 cell array
    {'n111'   }
    {'n111-y1'}
    {'n111-y2'}
    {'n111-y3'}
    {'n121'   }
    {'n121-x1'}
    {'n121-x2'}
    {'#'      }

ans = 7×3

0 0 0 0 450 0 0 1500 0 0 2550 0 0 3000 0 600 3000 0 2000 3000 0

Method two: REGEXP:

str = fileread('sampleQ.txt');
str = regexp(str,'(?<=nodal\.coordinates\s+)[^#]+','match','once');
tkn = regexp(str,'^\s*(\S+)\s+(\d\S+)\s+(\d\S+)\s+(\d\S+)','tokens','lineanchors');
tkn = vertcat(tkn{:})

tkn = 7×4 cell array
    {'n111'   }    {'0.'   }    {'0.'   }    {'0.'}
    {'n111-y1'}    {'0.'   }    {'450.' }    {'0.'}
    {'n111-y2'}    {'0.'   }    {'1500.'}    {'0.'}
    {'n111-y3'}    {'0.'   }    {'2550.'}    {'0.'}
    {'n121'   }    {'0.'   }    {'3000.'}    {'0.'}
    {'n121-x1'}    {'600.' }    {'3000.'}    {'0.'}
    {'n121-x2'}    {'2000.'}    {'3000.'}    {'0.'}

mat = str2double(tkn(:,2:end))

mat = 7×3

0 0 0 0 450 0 0 1500 0 0 2550 0 0 3000 0 600 3000 0 2000 3000 0

[Mostafa Abdelhafeez]

Thank you so much