The simplest solution is to read all of the data as a string, and split this into a cell array using regexp:
S = fileread('temp.txt');
C = regexpi(S,'^(\d+\.\d+) (.{20}) (.+?)$','tokens','lineanchors');
C = strtrim(vertcat(C{:}));
That's it! The value 20 is the width of the middle column. The variable C has three columns: the first has strings of the first values, the second has descriptions, and the third is the values. For example we can see the third row like this:
>> C(3,:)
ans =
'112.03' 'INU MAX POWER' '9000 kW'
If you want to convert the values to numeric, then you can easily do this in one step using my FEX submission sinum, which converts string like '9000 kW' to the numeric value of 9000000 plus the unit string 'W'. You can use it simply like this:
[val,spl,sgf] = cellfun(@sinum,C(:,3),'UniformOutput',false);
Again looking at the third row, we already have its value and unit:
>> val{3}
ans =
9000000
>> spl{3}{2}
ans =
'W'
This code works correctly on the following data file:
