Separate one column into 3 when finding a character

I have one column line but huge data >400,000 points separated by a character /& like this

 1 
 2 
 3 
 4 
 /& 
 5 
 6 
 7 
 8 
 /& 
 9 
 10 
 11 
 12 
 /&

I want to split this one column into three columns stops at the separator/& like :

 1 5 9   
 2 6 10
 3 7 11
 4 8 12

Answer 1

[OCDER]

New Answer:

FID = fopen('data.txt');
T = fscanf(FID, '%f');
fseek(FID, 0, 'bof');
Data = fscanf(FID, [repmat('%f\n', 1, length(T)) '/&'], [length(T) Inf]);
fclose(FID);

Old Answer:

FID = fopen('data.txt', 'r');
Data = fscanf(FID, '%f\n%f\n%f\n%f\n/&', [4 Inf])
fclose(FID);

Data =
   1     5     9
   2     6    10
   3     7    11
   4     8    12

[Mohamed Gamal]

Dear Donald:

The problem is that I do not have just four rows from my data I have unknown number sometimes more than 100,000 row.

Also I have tried the code but it could not see the separators "/&"

But anyway thank you for your effort.

[OCDER]

Hi Mohamed, try the new answer and see if this works. It uses the first scan to determine how many entries there are until the first non-double character (/&), and then uses that information to read in all the data into a Mx3 array.

[Mohamed Gamal]

Dear Donald I found the answer based on your comment 1-I have used fscanf to count the numbers 2-Use reshape fuction to split the 1 column to 3 column 3-use Save to save this regular shape matrix. here is the code:

fid3=fopen('c:\mat3\CH_AN1.dat'); % reshape the one column matrix into "3 Channels" T = fscanf (fid3, '%15E'); % to read ascii data L=(length (T)/3); B = reshape(T,L,3); save 'c:\mat3\save20.dat' B -ascii fclose(fid3);

Thanks alot for your help