Import large field-delimited file with strings and numbers

[João Rodrigues]

I need to import a large CSV file with multiple columns with mixed 
string and number entries, such as:

field1, field2, field3, field4
A,        a,        1,       1.0,
B,        b,        2,        2.0,
C,        c,        3,        3.0,

and I want to pass this on to something like

cell1 ={[1,1] = A; [2,1] = B; [3,1] = C};
cell2 ={[1,1] = a; [2,1] = b; [3,1] = c};
arr3 =[1 2 3]';
arr4 =[1.0 2.0 3.0]';

furthermore, some columns can be ignored, the total number of entries is 
known and there is a header.

How can I perform the import within reasonable time and little memory 
overhead? Below are a few of my attempts.

Octave offers a wide range of functions to import files (csvread, 
dlmread, textscan, textread, fscanf, fgetline) but as far as I can tell 
none seems to get the job done.

csvread and dlmread don't work because they only handle numerical data.

textscan works eats up all the memory (the file is 200 MB, textscan's 
memory usage was into the GB's). It doesn't allow to provide a priori 
the size of the object.

fid = fopen(fstr,"r");
[tmp] = textscan(fid,'%s  %s %d %d','delimiter', ',', 'headerlines', 1);
fclose(fid);

fgetline allow to define the size of the object a priori but requires a 
loop:

v = cell(nrow,4);
fid = fopen(fstr,"r");
tmp = fgetl(fid);
for irow = 1 : nrow
    tmp = fgetl(fid);
    v(irow,:) = strsplit(tmp,",");
endfor
fclose(fid);

Any suggestions? (I browsed google and the only suggestion I got was 
using fgetl, but this is too slow. It takes 30sec to read 1% of the full 
dataset).

Thanks