Skipping first bytes in a binary file using FREAD

I need to skip the first four bytes of a binary file using FREAD, but have not come up with a means to do so. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks, Josh

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

fread(fid,4,'*uint8');

and don't do anything with the result.

[Jan]

+1: FREAD has two advantages compared to FSEEK: 1. to my surprise it is faster, 2. it is *never* stopped by the OS, while FSEEK can be breaked in a multi-threaded environment in case of heavy system load. Both effects appear at least in Matlab 6.5 to 2009a and do *not* matter if you skip just 4 bytes. But if you skip some MB, be sure to catch the reply of FSEEK to check for an incomplete processing! While the underlying fseek of the runtime-libs reply the number of moved bytes, such that the processed can be finished iteratively even for relative movement, Matlab's FSEEK replies a flag only.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

doc fseek