Re: Reading CSV data and preserving empty cells?

[forkandwait]

> 
> Didn't you already ask this?
> 
>      http://n4.nabble.com/Alternative-missing-values-in-readcsv-
td1632243.html#a1632243
> 
> Or were you unsatisfied with the response given there? If so, why?

Yes, I was unsatisfied, because of the problems with textread I spoke about in 
the latest email (I don't want to write a format string for 250 columns, over 
and over again as I download multiple data sets).  Also, the sed solution 
doesn't work, nor can I think of a unix text based solution that will scale to 
lots and lots of columns.

cell2csv works brilliantly, except for putting a blank in where I want NaN, 
partly because of the weird fact that cell array strings that parse as numbers 
are useable in arithmetic expressions like so:

x = {1}
x{1} + 1
ans =  2

I thought cellidx would work, looking for empty strings with '' and reassigning 
with NaN, but for some reason it craps out on my data.  The problem  was a type 
error which fired when I tried to use cellidx on this data, mixing numerics 
with ''.  I don't have a reproducible example of this surprising error, so it 
will have to wait.

I was sort of hoping that someone had figured out something in the meantime ...

I don't know how to modify the csv2cell in the octave-forge miscellaneous 
package, since my local copy is an "oct" file, would need to be recompiled, 
etc.  If there is a quick guide to fiddling with oct files, I would be 
interested in a link, but I am not sure I have enough time to deal with it in 
the next few months.

I will post my solution as I come up with one.