readtable .txt file, reading string row issue

Hi,

I have a text file with several columns and rows. The first coulmn are string while the rest of the columns are just data. I would like to pull the row named "al28" for column 4:end. But I have issue with selectiong the string value and get error.

T = readtable('Test.txt');

T2=T('al28',4:end)

Error using Test

Unrecognized table row name 'al28'.

Thank you for your help

Birsen

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

You need to specify that the first column is the row names:

% Specify the file name
file_path = 'Test.txt';

% Read the file into a table
T = readtable(file_path, 'Delimiter', '\t', 'ReadRowNames', true);

T2 = T('al28',4:end)

T2 = 1×3 table
            Var4      Var5      Var6
            ____    ________    ____

    al28    48.2    4.97e-25    48.2

[Birsen Ayaz-Maierhafer]

Thank you. It worked.

How can I get the list of the first columns (na24m, mg27, ...)? I would like to loop through each of them and pull the values and plot later.

I tried T3=T(:,1) but it pulled the column Var1 not the list of the elements.

Thank you for your help.

Birsen

[Dyuman Joshi]

% Specify the file name
file_path = 'Test.txt';

% Read the file into a table
T = readtable(file_path, 'Delimiter', '\t', 'ReadRowNames', true);

T2 = T('al28',4:end)

T2 = 1×3 table
            Var4      Var5      Var6
            ____    ________    ____

    al28    48.2    4.97e-25    48.2

"How can I get the list of the first columns (na24m, mg27, ...)?"

Using the properties of the table -

names = T.Properties.RowNames

names = 12×1 cell array
    {'na24m'}
    {'mg27' }
    {'sc45m'}
    {'al28' }
    {'na24' }
    {'al30' }
    {'ne23' }
    {'na25' }
    {'cu62' }
    {'v52'  }
    {'al29' }
    {'mn56' }

"I tried T3=T(:,1) but it pulled the column Var1 not the list of the elements."

You need to access the data stored in the table. One way is to use curly brackets.

Read more here - Access Data in Tables

T3 = T{:,1}

T3 = 12×1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0