My output text file continues to have a delimiter. How do I change this in my code?

I have to create a text file of results across a 40 year period. The output file should not have a delimiter. However, even with a couple tweeks, it continues to produce the same result. How do I fix this?

close all;
clear all;
clc;

Datafiles = fileDatastore("temp_summary*.txt","ReadFcn",@readMonth,"UniformRead",true);
dataAll = readall(Datafiles)
dataAll.Year = year(dataAll.Day);
dataAll.Month = month(dataAll.Day);
dataAll.DD = day(dataAll.Day)

% Unstack variables
minT_tbl = unstack(dataAll,"MinT","Year","GroupingVariables", ["Month","DD"],"VariableNamingRule","preserve")
maxT_tbl = unstack(dataAll,"MaxT","Year","GroupingVariables", ["Month","DD"],"VariableNamingRule","preserve")
yrs =str2double(minT_tbl.Properties.VariableNames(3:end))';
% find min
[minT,idxMn] = min(minT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
minT_yr = yrs(idxMn);
% find max
[maxT,idxMx] = max(maxT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
maxT_yr = yrs(idxMx);
% find low high
[lowMaxT,idxMx] = min(maxT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
LowMaxT_yr = yrs(idxMx);
% find high low
[highlowMnT,idxMn] = max(minT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
HighLowT_yr = yrs(idxMn);

% find avg high
AvgMxT = mean(table2array(maxT_tbl),2);
% find avg low
AvgMnT = mean(table2array(minT_tbl),2);

% Results
tempTbl = [maxT_tbl(:,["Month","DD"]), table(maxT,maxT_yr,AvgMxT,lowMaxT,LowMaxT_yr,minT,minT_yr,AvgMnT,highlowMnT,HighLowT_yr)]
tempTbl2 = splitvars(tempTbl)
writetable(tempTbl2,'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt','Delimiter',' ')
type 'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt'

function Tbl = readMonth(filename)
opts = detectImportOptions(filename)
opts.ConsecutiveDelimitersRule = 'join';
opts.MissingRule = 'omitvar';
opts = setvartype(opts,'double');
opts.VariableNames = ["Day","MaxT","MinT","AvgT"];
Tbl = readtable(filename,opts)
Tbl = standardizeMissing(Tbl,{999,'N/A'},"DataVariables",{'MaxT','MinT','AvgT'})
[~,basename] = fileparts(filename);
nameparts = regexp(basename, '\.', 'split');
dateparts = regexp(nameparts{end}, '_','split');
year_str = dateparts{end}
d = str2double(extract(filename,digitsPattern));
Tbl.Day = datetime(d(3),d(2),Tbl.Day)
end

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Can you share a couple of sample data files so we can simulate and see the results from the code?

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

@Sulaymon Eshkabilov I attached 3 example data files. Thank you!

Answer 1

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Hi Jonathon,

Your code is working as it should :).

...
% One delimeter is put here and therefore, it is outputting one empty space delimeter betweend data points   
writetable(tempTbl2,'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt','Delimiter',' ') 
type 'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt'
...  

A couple of ideas here to make the output file better looking and structured.

(1) Using a tab as a delimeter:

...
    writetable(tempTbl2,'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt','Delimiter','\t')
    type 'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt'
...

(2) Using MS Excel file for the augmented data output.

...
    
writetable(tempTbl2,'Meda 05 Temperature Climatology0.xlsx')
winopen('Meda 05 Temperature Climatology0.xlsx')
...

That makes the whole augmented data better structured and better looking :)

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

Awesome, thank you! I ran the code and most of it was fixed. Some data still is out of place still but that's because I haven't found an adequate solution for rounding my mean calculations while omiting NaN.

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Most welcome! Glad to be of some help :)

[Image Analyst]

You accepted it so I guess you got it figured out. Though it does have delimiters of tabs and you said you don't want delimiters (though that doesn't make sense to me).

[Dyuman Joshi]

Even I don't understand that - OP specifying that output file should not have delimiters while using a code and accepting an answer, both of which quite obviously uses delimiters to write a file.

Something is missing.

If you don't want a delimiter, maybe you shouldn't save the file as a text file; consider saving the file as a spread-sheet.

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

Unfortunately, it must be a text file per supervisors demands. I have tried removing the delimiter from the code but all I get in return is an error.

[Image Analyst]

Maybe you don't know what a delimiter is. It's any character that separates your data from each other, even if it's a non-printable character like a space or tab. If you had none and your columns were like 123.0, abc, 757.7, 789.456, and defg, the text file with no delimiters would have a line that looked like

123.0abc757.7789.456defg

That format is useless. It's just complicating reading it back in for no reason whatsoever. So you do want delimiters. I suggest you ask your supervisor what delimiters would be acceptable. Maybe they're OK with space or tab and that's what they want (probably I'm thinking), they just didn't use precise terminology or understand what a delimiter is.

[Stephen23]

"I have tried removing the delimiter from the code but all I get in return is an error."

If you want no delimiter then use FPRINTF, as Image Analyst advised:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2066576-my-output-text-file-continues-to-have-a-delimiter-how-do-i-change-this-in-my-code#answer_1384161

How does your supervisor intend to distinguish between two pieces of data?

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

If that is the case then the fptintf() can be an option, e.g.:

But the recorded data does not look good without a delimiter.

...
FID = fopen('Meda05.txt', 'w');
fprintf(FID, "Month    DD    maxT    maxT_yr    AvgMxT    lowMaxT    LowMaxT_yr    minT    minT_yr    AvgMnT    highlowMnT    HighLowT_yr \n");
fprintf(FID, '%d%d%d%d%f%d%d%d%d%f%d%d \n', tempTbl2{:,1:end}');
fclose(FID)
...

Is that what is needed

If you use this syntax with fprintf(), that would be better:

...
FID = fopen('Meda06.txt', 'w');
fprintf(FID, "Month    DD    maxT    maxT_yr    AvgMxT    lowMaxT    LowMaxT_yr    minT    minT_yr    AvgMnT    highlowMnT    HighLowT_yr \n");
fprintf(FID, '%7d%7d%7d%7d%7.7f%7d%7d%7d%7d%7.7f%7d%7d \n', tempTbl2{:,1:end}');
fclose(FID)
winopen("Meda06.txt")
...

Or this one:

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

So the interesting part is this, tempTbl and tempTbl2 are perfect. However, when creating the new text file with the data is where the issue arrives (see attached). I have tried using fprintf but get an error as a result. The example that sulaymon provided as an excel is exactly how I want it but, it must be in .txt

[Image Analyst]

So the header is not aligned/justified over the values. I'm not sure why writetable() is messing up there (I didn't try it myself). However with fprintf() you can specify field lengths for everything so you can manually line things up by specifying the proper field widths.

Just be aware that there are delimiters there, either a space or a tab.

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Jonathon,

Adjust spacing between Table headers, e.g.:

...
fprintf(FID, "Month  DD  maxT  maxT_yr AvgMxT lowMaxT  LowMaxT_yr  minT minT_yr  AvgMnT  highlowMnT  HighLowT_yr \n");
...

And play with the numbers in front of specifiers:

...
    fprintf(FID, '%3d %5d %7d %7d %7.7f %7d %7d %7d %7d %10.7f %7d %7d \n', tempTbl2{:,1:end}');
...

[Stephen23]

As far as I can tell, what you want is known as a fixed-width text file, aka column aligned text file. You can use FPRINTF to achieve this.

Here is an easy way to get exactly the same widths for the titles, without fiddling around with space characters:

fprintf('%15s%15s%23s%13s\n','A','B','C','D');

              A              B                      C            D

fprintf('%15g%15f%23g%13f\n',99*rand(4,5));

        32.7753      13.065946                12.6147    62.692764
        34.6791      53.265117                32.6043    46.661824
        23.4144      25.356984                58.6653    91.186353
        72.3874      84.708866                4.30135    28.870313
        74.6895       1.830842                14.0215    39.716500

Specifying that you wanted a file with no delimiters is very unusual, and confused everyone here (especially when you then accepted an answer which used delimiters).

In a fixed-width file perhaps they would be better named padding characters (typically whitespace), as the file format does not give them the meaning of field delimiters:

https://www.softinterface.com/Convert-XLS/Features/Fixed-Width-Text-File-Definition.htm

https://towardsdatascience.com/parsing-fixed-width-text-files-with-pandas-f1db8f737276

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

@Stephen23@Sulaymon Eshkabilov

Yeah, I do apologize. I didn't mean to confuse anyone. I couldn't figure out a way to describe the issue at hand. With that being said, I have Sulaymon's code and currently adjusting the numbers. However, I will be trying your code Stephen to see how it works in comparison. Thank all of you guys for the help.

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

@Sulaymon Eshkabilov, it works great! After some adjustments, I found the right alignment.

Final Code

close all;
clear all;
clc;

Datafiles = fileDatastore("temp_summary*.txt","ReadFcn",@readMonth,"UniformRead",true);
dataAll = readall(Datafiles)
dataAll.Year = year(dataAll.Day);
dataAll.Month = month(dataAll.Day);
dataAll.DD = day(dataAll.Day)

% Unstack variables
minT_tbl = unstack(dataAll,"MinT","Year","GroupingVariables", ["Month","DD"],"VariableNamingRule","preserve")
maxT_tbl = unstack(dataAll,"MaxT","Year","GroupingVariables", ["Month","DD"],"VariableNamingRule","preserve")
yrs =str2double(minT_tbl.Properties.VariableNames(3:end))';
% find min
[minT,idxMn] = min(minT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
minT_yr = yrs(idxMn);
% find max
[maxT,idxMx] = max(maxT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
maxT_yr = yrs(idxMx);
% find low high
[lowMaxT,idxMx] = min(maxT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
LowMaxT_yr = yrs(idxMx);
% find high low
[highlowMnT,idxMn] = max(minT_tbl{:,3:end},[],2);
HighLowT_yr = yrs(idxMn);

% find avg high
AvgMxT = round(mean(table2array(maxT_tbl(:,3:end)),2,'omitnan'));
% find avg low
AvgMnT = round(mean(table2array(minT_tbl(:,3:end)),2,'omitnan'));

% Results
tempTbl = [maxT_tbl(:,["Month","DD"]), table(maxT,maxT_yr,AvgMxT,lowMaxT,LowMaxT_yr,minT,minT_yr,AvgMnT,highlowMnT,HighLowT_yr)]
tempTbl2 = splitvars(tempTbl)
FID = fopen('Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt', 'w');
fprintf(FID, "Month    DD    maxT    maxT_yr    AvgMxT    lowMaxT    LowMaxT_yr    minT    minT_yr    AvgMnT    highlowMnT    HighLowT_yr \n");
fprintf(FID, '%4d %6d %6d %9d %9d %9d %11d %11d %9d %9d %11d %14d \n', tempTbl2{:,1:end}');
fclose(FID)
winopen('Meda 05 Temperature Climatology.txt')




function Tbl = readMonth(filename)
opts = detectImportOptions(filename)
opts.ConsecutiveDelimitersRule = 'join';
opts.MissingRule = 'omitvar';
opts = setvartype(opts,'double');
opts.VariableNames = ["Day","MaxT","MinT","AvgT"];
Tbl = readtable(filename,opts)
Tbl = standardizeMissing(Tbl,{999,'N/A'},"DataVariables",{'MaxT','MinT','AvgT'})
[~,basename] = fileparts(filename);
nameparts = regexp(basename, '\.', 'split');
dateparts = regexp(nameparts{end}, '_','split');
year_str = dateparts{end}
d = str2double(extract(basename,digitsPattern));
Tbl.Day = datetime(d(3),d(2),Tbl.Day)
end

[Sulaymon Eshkabilov]

Great it is working! Dont forget to Thumb Up!

[Image Analyst]

And since the idea of using fprintf was originally mine, could you please "Vote" for my answer below to award reputation points? Thanks in advance. 😊

[Jonathon Klepatzki]

@Sulaymon Eshkabilov @Image Analyst

thumbs up!

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

You can go through each row of the table using fprintf to write whatever you want into a text file. Just don't write delimiters if you don't want them but I'd recommend using one, such as a space, tab, or comma so all the data doesn't run together in one long string.