load function with ascii text file

[randm.deakin]

Dear Help,

I’ve downloaded Octave v4.2 onto my Microsoft Surface 2 Pro (Windows 8.1) and I’ve been running some simple Matlab m-files.  Some of these files (functions) use the function ‘load’ that reads ascii data from a text file.  These text files have rows and columns of numbers as well as comment lines with a % symbol in column 1.  Matlab conveniently ignores these lines when load is invoked but Octave does not.

Can you suggest a way of reading data with comment lines?

Here’s an example data file below

% Pearson_Line_Data.txt
% Line data from Pearson (1901, p.569)
%
%   Pearson, K., 1901, 'On lines and planes of closest fit to systems of
%        points in space', Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 2, pp. 559-572
%
% serial x(i)  sd_x   y(i)  sd_y     covariance
    1    0.0   0.1    5.9   0.1         0
    2    0.9   0.1    5.4   0.1         0
    3    1.8   0.1    4.4   0.1         0
    4    2.6   0.1    4.6   0.1         0
    5    3.3   0.1    3.5   0.1         0
    6    4.4   0.1    3.7   0.1         0
    7    5.2   0.1    2.8   0.1         0
    8    6.1   0.1    2.8   0.1         0
    9    6.5   0.1    2.4   0.1         0
   10    7.4   0.1    1.5   0.1         0
% end of data

The block of data are the lines without % symbol in column 1.

Regards

Rod Deakin