windows and mac differences in basic functionality readtable

Hi,

I have a gui that runs perfectly fine on a Mac with 2017a, when I run it on win2017a (prior to compiling it) I get numerous errors. This one however I do not understand at all

Undefined operator '>' for input arguments of type 'cell'

I can trace it back to the line which reads in the data...

data=readtable(files(k).name,'FileType','text','Delimiter','tab','TreatAsEmpty',['UND. -60001','UND. -2011','UND. -62011']);

the Mac and Windows versions run this differently, the Mac honors the TreatAsEmpty, note on the Mac it requires double quotes (" ") around each argument to exclude as empty whereas the Windows version called that an error and wanted single quotes, it then does nothing with them. This leads to the array being a table in the Mac version of the GUI and a cell in the Windows version, I just can't see why some fundamental matlab basics would be so different between the versions?

Any ideas?

Best regards

Steve

close all
clear all
clc

       AA=uigetdir('\\company.com\data\users\ProfileFolders\my.name\Desktop\');   
      A1=string(AA)
            Folder_strings=char(strcat(A1,'/*.txt'))
            Folder_used=dir(Folder_strings)
            files=Folder_used
            nFiles=numel(files)
            nameHead=(files(1).name)
            expressionA = 'P\H\d\d\d\_'
            nameOfHead= regexp(nameHead,expressionA,'match')
            nameOfHead=nameOfHead{:}
            nameOfHead=(nameOfHead(1,1:5))

for k=1:nFiles
            data=readtable(files(k).name,'FileType','text','Delimiter','tab','TreatAsEmpty',['UND. -60001','UND. -2011','UND. -62011']);
            name3D=(files(k).name);
            RN=name3D;
            expression1 = 'M\d\R\d\_';
            Z(k)= regexp(RN,expression1,'match');
            %%Assign variables to data
            vel_NS=data.Velocity_ms;%-NS.....Nozze Scan data
%             vol_NS=data.Volume_pl;
%             traj_NS=data.Trajectory_deg;
%             noz_NS=data.ExpID;

                vel_NS(vel_NS > 10)=NaN;%for awful data exceeding 10m/s this will remove them
  end

[Jeremy Hughes]

Hi Steve,

It's hard to know what's happening without seeing the file.

First,

I would look at the encoding, Windows and Mac have different defaults. Set 'FileEncoding' in readtable to make that fixed.

Second,

'TreatAsEmpty',['UND. -60001','UND. -2011','UND. -62011']

I think this might not be doing what you want. This is not an array of strings, but a single character vector. (although this behavior is the same on all platforms so I doubt it's contributing to what you're seeing.)

I believe what you want is a cell array containing each character vector you want to be treated as empty:

'TreatAsEmpty',{'UND. -60001','UND. -2011','UND. -62011'}

Unless you really want the single value 'UND. -60001UND. -2011UND. -62011' to be treated as empty.

Finally,

the file separators for Mac and Windows are different.

\\xaar.com\data\users\ProfileFolders\Stephen.Devlin\Desktop\ is using the Windows separator '\'. That can cause confusing errors.

Hope this helps,

Jeremy

[Stephen Devlin]

Hi Jeremy,

Would it be possible for you to post this as an answer? I had already fixed it but you have nailed the problems I had and I would be more than happy to accept this.

Thank you,

Steve

[Stephen Devlin]

But take out the pathname part...

[Walter Roberson]

Where you used "" as the delimiter, you used a facility available in R2017a and later; your other system must be running an earlier version.

[Stephen Devlin]

Hi Walter, if you want to move this to an answer field I will accept it, apologies for not getting back sooner.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Where you used "" as the delimiter, you used a facility available in R2017a and later; your other system must be running an earlier version.