How can I please reduce the code running time?

Dear All, I wrote this code to analyze my text data, each time I run this code it takes exactly 22 minutes to finish ! which is very long time, since I am new on MATLAB I still don't know the tricks to minimize running time, will any body please give me some ideas regarding this code? Thank you MATLAB Community

clear;
  clc;

    directory=dir('*.Y07');
    count=0;

    for K = 1 : length(directory)
        filename = directory(K).name;
        fileID = fopen(filename,'r');
        formatSpec = '%s';
        A_cell = textscan(fileID,formatSpec);
        A=char(A_cell{1,1}{:,:});
        A(find(isnan(A)))=0;

        [rows,columns]=size(A);

        if columns~=105 
     ArrayTemp=zeros(rows,105);
     ArrayTemp(1:rows,1:columns)=A;
     A=ArrayTemp;
     A=char(A);
     A(isspace(A)) = '0';
    end

        x1=filename;
        xtr=strcat('C:\Users\maa285\Desktop\New folder (2)\',x1);
        fid = fopen( xtr, 'wt' );

        Record_Type = A(:,1:1);
        FibsCode = A(:,2:3);
        StationID = A(:,4:9);
        Direction_Of_Travel = A(:,10:10);
        Lane_Of_Travel = A(:,11:11);
        Year_of_Data = A(:,12:13);
        Month_of_Data = A(:,14:15);
        Day_of_Data = A(:,16:17);
        Hour_of_Data = A(:,18:19);
        Vehicle_Class = A(:,20:21);
        Open = A(:,22:24);
        Total_Weight_of_vehicle = A(:,25:28);
        Number_of_axles = A(:,29:30);
        A_Axle_Weight = A(:,31:33);
        A_B_Axle_spacing = A(:,34:36);
        B_Axle_Weight = A(:,37:39);
        B_C_Axle_spacing = A(:,40:42);
        C_Axle_Weight = A(:,43:45);
        C_D_Axle_spacing = A(:,46:48);
        D_Axle_Weight = A(:,49:51);
        D_E_Axle_spacing = A(:,52:54);
        E_Axle_Weight = A(:,55:57);
        E_F_Axle_spacing = A(:,58:60);
        F_Axle_Weight = A(:,61:63);
        F_G_Axle_spacing= A(:,64:66);
        G_Axle_Weight = A(:,67:69);
        G_H_Axle_spacing = A(:,70:72);
        H_Axle_Weight = A(:,73:75);
        H_I_Axle_spacing = A(:,76:78);
        I_Axle_Weight= A(:,79:81);
        I_J_Axle_spacing = A(:,82:84);
        J_Axle_Weight = A(:,85:87);
        J_K_Axle_spacing= A(:,88:90);
        K_Axle_Weight = A(:,91:93);
        K_L_Axle_spacing = A(:,94:96);
        L_Axle_Weight = A(:,97:99);
        L_M_Axle_spacing = A(:,100:102);
        M_Axle_Weight = A(:,103:105);

        %This is to convert the string to numbers so it can show the output:

        Ans_1=str2num(Record_Type);
        fprintf(fid,Record_Type);

        Ans_2=str2num(FibsCode);
        fprintf(fid,FibsCode);

        Ans_3=str2num(StationID);
        fprintf(fid,StationID);

        Ans_4=str2num(Direction_Of_Travel);
        fprintf(fid,Direction_Of_Travel);

        Ans_5=str2num(Lane_Of_Travel);
        fprintf(fid,Lane_Of_Travel);

        Ans_6=str2num(Year_of_Data);
        fprintf(fid,Year_of_Data);

        Ans_7=str2num(Month_of_Data);
        fprintf(fid,Month_of_Data);

        Ans_8=str2num(Day_of_Data);
        fprintf(fid,Day_of_Data);

        Ans_9=str2num(Hour_of_Data);
        fprintf(fid,Hour_of_Data);

        Ans_10=str2num(Vehicle_Class);
        fprintf(fid,Vehicle_Class);

        Ans_11=str2num(Open);
        fprintf(fid,Open);

        Ans_12=str2num(Total_Weight_of_vehicle);
        fprintf(fid,Total_Weight_of_vehicle);

        Ans_13=str2num(Number_of_axles);
        fprintf(fid,Number_of_axles);

        Ans_14=str2num(A_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,A_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_15=str2num(A_B_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,A_B_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_16=str2num(B_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,B_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_17=str2num(B_C_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,B_C_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_18=str2num(C_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,C_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_19=str2num(C_D_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,C_D_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_20=str2num(D_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,D_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_21=str2num(D_E_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,D_E_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_22=str2num(E_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,E_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_23=str2num(E_F_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,E_F_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_24=str2num(F_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,F_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_25=str2num(F_G_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,F_G_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_26=str2num(G_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,G_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_27=str2num(G_H_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,G_H_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_28=str2num(H_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,H_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_29=str2num(H_I_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,H_I_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_30=str2num(I_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,I_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_31=str2num(I_J_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,I_J_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_32=str2num(J_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,J_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_33=str2num(J_K_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,J_K_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_34=str2num(K_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,K_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_35=str2num(K_L_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,K_L_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_36=str2num(L_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,L_Axle_Weight);

        Ans_37=str2num(L_M_Axle_spacing);
        fprintf(fid,L_M_Axle_spacing);

        Ans_38=str2num(M_Axle_Weight);
        fprintf(fid,M_Axle_Weight);

        %to establish a new arrays for the date:
        monthvar = Month_of_Data;
        dayvar = Day_of_Data;
        yearvar = Year_of_Data;

        datevar = strcat(num2str(monthvar),'/',num2str(dayvar),'/',num2str(yearvar));
    %     DayNumber = weekday(datevar);
        [DayNumber,DayName] = weekday(datevar);

        %%to return the separated vectors into one new matrix with usable data:
        all=[Ans_2,Ans_2,Ans_3,Ans_4,Ans_5,Ans_6,Ans_7,Ans_8,Ans_9,Ans_10,DayNumber,Ans_12,Ans_13,Ans_14,Ans_15,Ans_16,Ans_17,Ans_18,Ans_19,Ans_20,Ans_21,Ans_22,Ans_23,Ans_24,Ans_25,Ans_26,Ans_27,Ans_28,Ans_29,Ans_30,Ans_31,Ans_32,Ans_33,Ans_34,Ans_35,Ans_36,Ans_37,Ans_38];
    %     all(isspace(all)) = '0';
        %now select each class data out of the original data A.

        VehClass = Ans_10;

        Class9_data = all(VehClass == 9, :);

        count=count+1;
    end

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

Note, this code is used to read multiple files, that is why I use the fprintf command, I have K numbers of files.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You are using fprintf() with no format specifier, passing in what looks to be character strings. The character strings are going to be interpreted as being format strings. That will mostly result in the character strings being output. However, they will be output with no spaces between them and no delimiter.

You can improve performance by calling fprintf() fewer times, such as

fprintf(fid, '%s %s %s %s %s', H_Axle_Weight, H_I_Axle_Weight, I_Axle_Weight, I_J_Axle_Weight)

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

Thank you very much Mr Walter, I will modify my code and run it now.

Answer 2

[Gregory McFadden]

try running your code after issuing

profile on

and then when it is done use

profile viewer

that will tell you exactly what line(s) are consuming all the time in the code, then we can focus on those specific long compute time issues

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

so you mean I type profile on then run the code then type profile viewer

I did it and i am waiting for the run to finish.

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

I tried it and it gave me this, what does this mean?

[Walter Roberson]

You should click on the "strcat" part. The profiler will show you a summary of where strcat was called..

I would suggest that you should be considering using sprintf() instead of all of those num2str() and strcat()

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

Thank you very much for your advice, I will try it now

[MAHMOUD ALZIOUD]

this saved me 5 minutes, instead of 22 minutes per run, now it is 17. so it worked. thank you for this

Answer 3

[Jan]

After

A=char(A_cell{1,1}{:,:});

A is a CHAR. Then it cannot contain NaNs, because this can happen for DOUBLE and SINGLE only. The line:

A(find(isnan(A)))=0;

is useless in consequence.

The numbered variables "Ans_1" look cruel. It is a horror to debug this.