OK, as I suspected, the file format is NOT tab delimited but fixed-width columns except the records aren't the same length; the record is terminated after the last data in the record. So, the lines are as follows:
'010802 2015/01/01 00:00 AR'
'010802 2015/01/01 00:15 AR'
...
'010802 2015/04/20 00:00 15.20 '
'010802 2015/04/20 00:15 15.20 '
...
where I've enclosed the two record types in single quotes to be able to see what's actually in the file. Since C (and hence Matlab) formatted input ignores whitespace excepting if you read counted characters (as in '%Nc'), you can't write a single format string to parse both data records at the same time for the whole file.
It is possible, however, to read a record at a time with the same format string w/ textscan as it will pick up after the error of the failed conversion for an empty field--I created a very short version of your file without the preamble other than the header line and a few of each record type for demonstration purposes:
>> fmt=['%d %4d/%2d/%2d %2d:%2d %f%*[^\n]'];
>> fid=fopen('test.txt');
>> fgetl(fid);
>> while ~feof(fid)
textscan(fid,fmt,1,'headerlines',1)
end
ans =
[10802] [2015] [4] [19] [22] [45] [0x1 double]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [4] [19] [23] [0] [0x1 double]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [4] [19] [23] [15] [0x1 double]
...
[10802] [2015] [4] [20] [0] [0] [15.2000]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [4] [20] [0] [15] [15.2000]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [4] [20] [0] [30] [15.2000]
ans =
...
ans =
[10802] [2015] [5] [1] [1] [30] [180.3000]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [1] [12] [15] [35.7300]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [1] [12] [30] [35.7300]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [1] [12] [45] [35.7300]
...
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [29] [23] [45] [67.1200]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [30] [0] [0] [0x1 double]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [30] [0] [15] [0x1 double]
ans =
[10802] [2015] [11] [30] [0] [30] [0x1 double]
...
ans =
[10802] [2015] [12] [11] [10] [45] [0x1 double]
ans =
Columns 1 through 6
[0x1 int32] [0x1 int32] [0x1 int32] [0x1 int32] [0x1 int32] [0x1 int32]
Column 7
[0x1 double]
>> fid=fclose(fid);
The last record is the EOF case...
Alternatively, you can
1. read the file into a cellstring array,
2. convert to character array which will pad the short records,
3. convert the fixed width substring fields in memory.
Or, an even better choice, avoid all this hassle and create a delimited, regular file format that can be parsed easily.
Here's another case where Fortran FORMAT wins, hands down--it would read the empty data field although would need fixed record length file.
