Insert a mathematical function in a GUI from a txt file

I would like to insert a mathematical expression, written in a txt file in Matlab and I don't know if it is possible. For example I would like to make Matlab read from a txt file the expression:

(x^2+x)*cos(x)

or even more complicated containing sums etc.

I know this can be done if loaded from a m-file. what about .txt file?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

[Amith Kamath]

This is quite interesting! I could do it this way:

Suppose a file called data has the lines:

x = 5;

y = (x^2+x)*cos(x);

Now you can read the file data as is using

z = textread('data','%s');

and with a quick conversion into a string using

y = cell2mat(z') %transpose to get the data in a row rather than a column, for z is a column of cells.

do an eval(y) to evaluate the contents of the textfile!

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/22330-can-you-have-the-user-input-an-equation-in-matlab