how to read and write files with contain both ASCII and binary data

[chairmantom]

I have a file which starts with an ASCII header followed by binary 14-bit data. I wish to use Matlab open the file, convert the binary data to numbers on which some calculations are performed before saving the file. I need to leave the file in the same form as it was originally, i.e. with ASCII header followed by binary 14bit data.

Currently, I can open the file using textscan, and view the headers (while the binary part is nonsense), or I can open using fread, and view the binary data (with the header being nonsense).

I would really appreciate any advice about how to read and write files with contain both ASCII and binary data.

I hope that make some sort of sense.

 

[IRstuff]

Why can't you read everything in as binary and cast the header back into text?

TTFN

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[cibachrome]

You can use fread(fid,var,format) with combinations of format as uchar, real*4, etc to pick out the ASCII and binary sections. I even have to deal with the line-feed carriage returns as uchar strings in some of my file reading deals. If you can read the file with a hex editor its pretty easy to spot what sections are ascii and what are binary. Then just paw thru it.