Reading data files

[Jens Thoms Toerring]

Hi,

   I am using Octave often for simulations of experimental data. Therfore, I
also have to read in these data. The data files usually start with a header
with the experimental conditions, commented out with either a '%' or a
'#'. While this leads to no problem e.g. with Matlab, Octave doesn't seem
to like these header lines and complains (file name is `a1')

error: load: a1: inconsistent number of columns near line 2
error: load: unable to extract matrix size from file `a1'
error: evaluating index expression near line 1, column 1

Is there a way to avoid having to edit each data file to remove the headers?
(Of course, on could easily delete the header with grep or friends, but this
would mean to have every file twice and, besides, I forget to go through
this procedure constantly...)

                                            Thanks, Jens

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   Jens Thoms T\"orring        address@hidden
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