For loop question/ plot figure

1. I am using a for loop to plot muliple text files; (files go from MT_0058 to MT_0212.txt) Which represent helicopter flight data, And I am running into an issue where some of the files (60% or more) have bad data for the first 300 rows, but may have 20-30 thousand in total. I would like to adjust the headerlines to exclude this bad data, but am running into a problem where some of the files have fewer than 300 rows (shorter flights). Is there a way to adjust the headerlines and ignore text files that have fewer than the minimum amount of rows? Without stopping the program.
2. When plotting these text files, is there a way to simply use the saveas function without opening the plots as to avoid cluttering my computer with a large amount of open figures?

for k = 58:212    
inputFileName =  sprintf('MT_%05i-000.txt',k);
outputFileName = sprintf('results%05i.tiff',k);
fid = fopen(inputFileName);       
datacell = textscan(fid, '%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f','HeaderLines',5);  
fclose(fid);
...   
saveas(gcf,outputFileName);
end

Answer 1

[Thomas]

If you are on a linux system try

for k = 58:212    
inputFileName =  sprintf('MT_%05i-000.txt',k);
outputFileName = sprintf('results%05i.tiff',k);
fid = fopen(inputFileName);     
new_cmd=sprintf('more %s|wc -l', inputFileName);
[p,num_lines]=system(newcmd);

if num_lines<=300  
datacell = textscan(fid, '%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f','HeaderLines',5);  
fclose(fid);
else
datacell = textscan(fid, '%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f','HeaderLines',300);  
fclose(fid);
...   
saveas(gcf,outputFileName);
end
end

Do not have access to MATLAB currently so cannot check..

[Thomas]

I guess you are on a windows platform and hence have re-posted the question..

[douglas]

yes I have, sorry for the confusion