Write string and table (in that order) to text file

I need to write a string and a table to one text file. The string contains a description of the data in the table, but is not the headers for the table. I am using R2019a which I guess means the "Append" writetable option does not work? Please see my example data below:

% Load data
load cereal.mat;
table =  table(Calories, Carbo, Cups, Fat, Fiber, Mfg, Name, Potass);
string = {'This is a string about the cereal table'};
filename = "dummyoutput.sfc";

% How I tried to do this (which does not work!)
fid = fopen(filename, 'w', 'n');
fprintf(fid, '%s', cell2mat(string))
fclose(fid);
writetable(table, filename, 'FileType', 'text', 'WriteVariableNames', 0, 'Delimiter', 'tab', 'WriteMode', 'Append')

I get this error (because 'WriteMode' was introduced in R2020a)

Error using writetable (line 155)
Wrong number of arguments.

Does anyone have a workaround for this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Melissa Buechlein]

I doubt this is the most efficent workaround, but it solved my issue.

writetable(table, filename, 'WriteVariableNames', 0,...
    'FileType', 'text', 'Delimiter', 'space', 'QuoteStrings', false)
content = fileread(filename);

 % Update the file
 content = {cell2mat(header{:}); content};
 
 % go back and remove empty lines
newcontent = regexprep(content, {'\r', '\n\n+'}, {'', '\n'});

 % write the full file
 writecell(newcontent, filename, 'FileType', 'text', 'QuoteStrings', false);

Answer 2

[Takumi]

How about using this function?

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28600-xlsappend

[Melissa Buechlein]

My output needs to a text file with a '.sfc' extension, which I does not seem possible with that function :(

[Takumi]

Oops, I'm sorry, I missed it.

[Takumi]

How about writing in fprintf instead of writetable?

Append To or Overwrite Existing Text Files

table2array

table2cell

[Melissa Buechlein]

My output table is not all of the same format, so I cannot turn it into an array. I am also unfamiliar with how to make fprintf work with cells. However, I was able to come up with a work around! Thanks for your suggestions!