how to read matrices ?

[Jochen Solbrig]

hello!

i' trying to read matrices like this one from a data file:
1 2
2 6
3 9

i could use the function "load" but this case i have to
specify the name of the matrix and it's number of
columns and rows in a header.

using fopen/ fscanf i can either specify only the number of
rows or both the number of rows and columns.
is there a way to only specify the number of columns, too?
only the number of columns since i don't always k
thanks,
         jochen