Parsing a complex text file

I want to parse a complex text file (attached). The file has repetitive batches of:

pline3D = new TPolyLine3D(8,"");

Int_t ci;      // for color index setting
TColor *color; // for color definition with alpha
ci = TColor::GetColor("#336699");
pline3D->SetLineColor(ci);
pline3D->SetLineWidth(2);
pline3D->SetPoint(0,101,101,-0.499);
pline3D->SetPoint(1,100.9983,101.0039,-0.4983234);
pline3D->SetPoint(2,101.0006,100.9976,-0.4986736);
pline3D->SetPoint(3,100.9977,101.0087,-0.4988685);
pline3D->SetPoint(4,100.9977,101.0087,-0.4988685);
pline3D->SetPoint(5,100.9937,101.0018,-0.4992562);
pline3D->SetPoint(6,100.9937,101.0018,-0.4992562);
pline3D->SetPoint(7,101.0014,101.0041,-0.4994762);
pline3D->Draw();

Here in first line 8 is the size of the track. for every batch I want to this along with the coordinates provided inside SetPoint(#,#,#,#).

For example the first track is of size 8 and is consist of these coordinates. The file is pretty big and has different track sizes. I would be grateful of any help I can get here.

Thanks very much for your time!

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

Try this code

f = fopen('line_plot_1.txt');
data = {};

while ~feof(f)
    data_ = textscan(f, 'pline3D->SetPoint(%f,%f,%f,%f);');
    if ~isempty(data_{1})
        data{end+1} = [data_{:}];
    else
        fgetl(f);
    end
end
fclose(f);

It creates a cell array, and each cell contains four columns corresponding to the values in files.

Result:

>> data{1}
ans =
         0  101.0000  101.0000   -0.4990
    1.0000  100.9983  101.0039   -0.4983
    2.0000  101.0006  100.9976   -0.4987
    3.0000  100.9977  101.0087   -0.4989
    4.0000  100.9977  101.0087   -0.4989
    5.0000  100.9937  101.0018   -0.4993
    6.0000  100.9937  101.0018   -0.4993
    7.0000  101.0014  101.0041   -0.4995
>> data{2}
ans =
         0  101.0000  101.0000   -0.4990
    1.0000  100.9977  100.9945   -0.4992
    2.0000  101.0122  100.9999   -0.4996
>> data{6}
ans =
         0  101.0000  101.0000   -0.4990
    1.0000  101.0004  101.0058   -0.4987
    2.0000  101.0051  101.0103   -0.4984
    3.0000  101.0037  101.0054   -0.4995
    4.0000  101.0037  101.0054   -0.4995
    5.0000  101.0034  100.9967   -0.4995
    6.0000  101.0034  100.9967   -0.4995
    7.0000  101.0034  100.9967   -0.4995
    8.0000  101.0034  100.9967   -0.4995

[Sanchit Sharma]

Thank you!

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

You can use fileread() to read the entire file in as a character vector. Then use regexp() searching for

'new TPolyLine3D.*?Draw\(\);'

That will give you back a cell array in which each entry is a chunk of the file.

From there you can regexp() the cell array matching on

(?<=SetPoint\(\d+,)(?<x>[^,]+),(?<y>[^,]+),(?<z>[^\)])

and giving the option 'names' . The output for each cell entry will be a struct array with fields x, y, and z, which will be the text representations of the numbers. You can structfun(@str2double) or something similar to get the numeric values.

[Sanchit Sharma]

Thank you