The number of lines on ASCII file should be same - error

Hi Team

I wrote this simple code to understand loading and saving

tan =randi([-1,3],2,3)
save 'testtan.dat' tan
clear
load 'testtan.dat' 'tan'
    Error using load
    Number of columns on line 2 of ASCII file testtan.dat must be the same as previous lines.

So. I need help understanding what it means. My matrix seems to be fair but what does it mean ' columns of ASCII file'.

Please help.

I have used importdata and other methods, they are fine but I want to understand load function in depth as i will be using it a lot.

Thank you

R

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

What are you trying to do?

You can read more about save in the doc. There are also examples there to help you get started.

If you are trying to create mat files (MATLAB's way of saving variables), try the following

tan =randi([-1,3],2,3)
save('testtan','tan')
clear
load 'testtan'

If you instead are trying to save the data to a file in ascii format, try this

tan =randi([-1,3],2,3)
writematrix(tan,'testtan.dat')
clear
tan = readmatrix('testtan.dat')

[Cris LaPierre]

If you are partial to doing it the way you've shown, then you'll need to specify the format of testtan.dat. When using save, MATLAB will try to format the file contents based on the extension. Not sure what it is doing with *.dat, but forcing '-ascii' fixes the issue you are seeing.

tan =randi([-1,3],2,3)
save('testtan.dat','tan','-ascii')
clear
tan = load('testtan.dat')

The second argument in the load command (variables) is only supported for *.mat files. If you are going to use a different file extension, that argument cannot be used.

[R HULD]

thank you. all those suggestions were great. especially about .mat file argument. :)