Read equations from a text file and create a cell array in MATLAB

Hello everybody! I have a text file with 8000 equations and I want to create a cell array of 8000x1 for the equations as strings. I have considered textscan for this purpose, but all the equations doesn't have same number of variables and hence I cannot specify the number of columns. How do I go about it? Example:

equations.txt:
1. a=b+c
2. d=e+f+g+h
3. y=2+x*z

[Ameer Hamza]

Do you want to only load them as a string? or to also convert them to function handles?

[Tiasa Ghosh]

I want them only as strings.

[Walter Roberson]

Are the line numbers present in the file? If they are do you want them read in or discarded?

[Tiasa Ghosh]

the line numbers are not present in the file. I wrote them just to number the equations. the equations ma contain special characters too.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Provided there are no UNICODE or UTF-8 characters in the file:

filename = 'equations.txt';
S = fileread(filename);
equations = regexp(S, '\r?\n', 'split');
if isempty(equations{end}); equations(end) = []; end   %last entry is often empty due to the way regexp split works

If the file does include Unicode that is UTF encoded, then potentially more steps would need to be used to read it properly.

Answer 2

[Ameer Hamza]

The following lines will read the lines from the text file and return a cell array of function handles

f = fopen('test.txt');
q = textscan(f, '%s');
fclose(f);
funHandles = cell(1, length(q{1}));
for i=1:length(q{1})
  splitAtEqualSign = strsplit(q{1}{i}, '=');
  rhs = splitAtEqualSign{2};
  funHandles{i} = matlabFunction(str2sym(rhs));
end

[Tiasa Ghosh]

Thank you for your response. But I do not want them as function handles. Just as cell array of strings.

[Ameer Hamza]

Then don't run for loop. q{1} contain cell array of strings.

[Ameer Hamza]

Since you mentioned that line numbers are not present. I have updated the answer.