Read first column from the text file

I have a text file that contains eighty rows with six columns of data values. All I want to do is read a first column of values only. How do I read the column ?

[Nuwan Liyanage]

% Assigning the path
path = 'C:\Users\User\abc\'; %abc is your folder which contains the txt file

% Assigning a variable to access the file
fileName = [path,'xyz.txt'];

% Importing all the data from the txt file
fileEntireDataSet = importdata(FileName);

% Assigning the first column only
dataFirstColumn = fileEntireDataSet.data(:,1); 

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

fid = fopen('sample.txt')
    %        ^^^^^^^^^^----- your filename
formatspec=['%f',repmat('%*f',1,5)]; % 5 represents total columns - the first column
data = textscan(fid,formatspec);
fid = fclose(fid);
data{:} % first column

[madhan ravi]

Honestly I would read the full text file :

data=load('sample.txt'); % assuming you only have data values(numbers)
data(:,1) % and jus extract the first column
% or
data=readtable('sample.txt'); % requires 2013a or later
data(:,1) % table with one column which is the first column
data{:,1} % just numbers in the first column

[Vincy Y]

Yes, it is work, thanks to you,

[Asko Köhn]

All format specifiers for textscan() are also supported in readtable(), so the suggested solution by textscan(fileID,...) could also less verbosely be implemented with readtable():

col_1 = readtable('sample.txt', 'Format','%f %*f %*f %*f %*f %*f');

Or for a known header of the first column e.g. 'header_1':

opts = detectImportOptions('sample.txt');
opts.SelectedVariableNames = {'header_1'};
col_1 = readtable('sample.txt', opts);

which can be really useful for extraction of a few columns from files containing a greater number of columns.