read_dlm_esc

Quickly read character delimited files (ie CSV, etc) into a cell array in octave.

This oct creates an Octave function to read a delimited file, similar to dlmread(), but allowing for delimiters to be escaped, like quotes in a CSV file.

In the current implementation consecutive delimiters are treated as a single delimiter

read_dlm_esc() Vs dlmread():

• read_dlm_esc() is much faster than dlmread(), but it is slower than csv2cell() from the io package
• read_dlm_esc() is probably not as robust as dlmread()
• read_dlm_esc() returns a cell array, rather than a matrix
• Because read_dlm_esc() returns a cell array, strings can be loaded from a CSV file
• read_dlm_esc(), as the name implies will escape delimiters.
• read_dlm_esc() can handle a variable number of fields in a line, which csv2cell() will not do.

Example

 a = read_dlm_esc("file.csv", ","0, 0, '"')

used on a file like:

 "Item", "a,b", "decimal"
 1,2,3
 2,3,4

will return:

 a = 
 {
   [1,1] = Item
   [2,1] =  1
   [3,1] =  2
   [1,2] = a,b
   [2,2] =  2
   [3,2] =  3
   [1,3] = decimal
   [2,3] =  3
   [3,3] =  4
 }

TODO

• Implement the starting column parameter