MATLAB Programming

Exporting Text Data
Table 6-4
ASCII Data Export Function Features
Function Use With Delimiters Notes
csvwrite
Numeric
data
Commas only
Primarily used with
spreadsheet data.
See “Working with
Spreadsheets” on page
6-97.
diary
Numeric
data or cell
array
Spaces only
Can be used for small
arrays. Requires editing
of data file to remove
extraneous text.
dlmwrite
Numeric
data
Any character
Easy to use, flexible.
fprintf
Alphabetic
and numeric
data
Any character
Part of low-level file I/O
routines. This function
is the most flexible but
also the most difficult to
use. You must use fopen
to obtain a file identifier
before writing the data
and fclose to close the file
after writing the data.
save
Numeric
data
Tabs or spaces
Easy to use; output values
are high precision.
Exporting Delimited ASCII Data Files
To export an array as a delimited ASCII data file, you can use either the
save function, specifying the -ASCII qualifier, or the dlmwrite function. The
save function is easy to use; however, the dlmwrite function provides more
flexibility, allowing you to specify any character as a delimiter and to export
subsets of an array by specifying a range of values.
Using the save Function
To export the array A,
6-85