% ECE 1250 S12 Lecture M13

% Today's lecture covers Matlab® commands for reading and writing to and from memory.
% There are several different ways of storing information in files.


% Native Data Files.  Save things compactly in binary.
%-----------------------------------------------------
save
% Saves everything in file matlab.mat (binary)
% Matlab format (undecipherable) but is cross platform compatible

a = [0 3]
save('a')  % Just saves variable 'a'
save('filea','a')  % Saves in file called filea.mat

% Strange things...
save('b','a')  % Creates file b.mat instead of saving b

b = [9, 4]
save('b','a')  % Saves vars b and a in file matlab.mat

load  % loads everything
load('filea','a')  % 1st arg must be filename for load

% Check whether a particular file exists.
exist('matlab.mat','file')  % Need 2nd arg = 'file'

% See what's in a file
whos('-file','matlab.mat')  % Unix style, -file 1st arg

% General purpose wizard for reading in data
uiimport


% Data Import and Export in text files.
%-----------------------------------------------------
big_array = rand(3,4)

%  Store data with commas between items.
dlmwrite('myfile.txt',big_array,',')  % write as text file,

new_big_array = dlmread('myfile.txt',',')  % read with slightly different syntax

% Read a .wav file using wavread() function
%-----------------------------------------------------

% Low-level file I/O example functions in rd_str_file.m and wr_str_file.m