Question

I have an excel data set that has one column which is a list of files paths that I would like to read into Matlab. When I use the xlsread command I obtain the following result

raw = 

'files'        
[1x135 char]  
[1x135 char] 
[1x141 char] 
[1x141 char] 
[1x149 char]
[1x149 char]  

Now I understand that the file path in element 1 was 135 characters, but what I don’t understand is how to get Matlab to display the path. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at cell arrays. As the xlsread documentation states, the raw output argument is cell array. Cell array elements are accessed as follows:

myPath = raw{2}

Note the curly braces rather than normal brackets. When displaying cell array contents, MATLAB will only display the content of a matrix if is below a certain size, which is why all your paths are not showing in this format.