Re: Reading in a data file into Octave

[Kai Torben Ohlhus]

On 8/15/19 4:05 AM, Daniel Zepeda Rivas wrote:

>> *From:* Alex Yelland <address@hidden>
>>  
>> [...]
>> 
>> For the next stage of my research, my professor has request of me to
>> learn how to "read in" a data file such as in a text or excel format. I
>> have been looking through a couple of sources in the Octave User Manual;
>> however, I am not understanding what I am reading. I was curious if you
>> could shed some light on a simple way to do this within the Octave program?
>> 
>> (In addition to this, if you know a way to easily convert a program
>> written in IDL to a script written in the Octave language, I would also
>> really appreciate any insight...)
>> 
>> Thank you for any help you can provide.
>> 
>> 
>> Alexander Yelland
> 
> [...]
>
> Anyhow, this one talks about what you want to know, I think this one
> (the video 17) and the following 3 videos cover what you need, but
> first, look at number 7 too.
>
> https://youtu.be/gkVOSxmhtyk
>
>
> *Daniel Zepeda-Rivas*
>


Please answer by bottom-posting [1] to this mailing list to make it
easier to follow the conversation.

Those videos are rather old, created 2011.  I did not watch them in
detail, but I think there have been some improvements of how doing
things easier today (e.g. we have a GUI ;-) ).  Anyways, they might
serve as a good start as many commands did not change.

@Alexander Yelland: Regarding the Excel input, I think you should
familiarize with the Octave Forge IO package [2], especially the
`xlsread` function [3].  A very verbose explanation how to make it work
is given in the wiki [4].

Regarding the IDL scripts, do you mean [5]?  Three letter acronyms are
not unique in computer science ;-)  Please be precise.   At least I
don't know a tool to convert [5] to Octave scripts easily.  But it is
said that the syntax does not differ that much.

HTH,
Kai

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Bottom-posting
[2] https://octave.sourceforge.io/io/index.html
[3] https://octave.sourceforge.io/io/function/xlsread.html
[4] https://wiki.octave.org/IO_package
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDL_(programming_language)