Can files saved using 64bit Matlab version be read into a 32bit Matlab version?

Question

Luca Cerone 2012-8-31

I can't read some files created using Matlab on a 64bit computer on my university desktop having a 32bit OS.

I wonder if the files have to be saved with some special option on the 64bit machine.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Luca

Answer 1

Walter Roberson 2012-8-31

There are some issues to watch out for:

There are no storage format differences for the same .mat file version between 32 and 64 bit MATLABs
R2006b introduced a new file organization, "v7.3". Previous versions of MATLAB are not able to read -v7.3 files. -v7.3 is not the default for MATLAB, however.
v7.3 files can exceed 2 Gigabytes. Trying to read a large file on a system that has less memory (perhaps because it is 32 bit MATLAB that cannot address as much memory) will lead to problems. Though really this is a problem even with the earlier file formats.
Some object-oriented object types require -v7.3 to be saved.
The storage of some object-oriented objects has changed since -v7.3 was introduced, so there are some objects that cannot be loaded into versions of MATLAB from before that change, even though that version generally supports the file format. Neural Networks were affected by this change.