Read numeric text files using FREAD in MATLAB

Question

I'm aware that fread can be used for reading binary data. I read somewhere that it can also read text files. I have a numeric text file that I generated using BCP utility and SQL Server. I am trying to read this huge data in Matlab. textscan and fscanf are slow in my case. fread reads the data and prints out their ASCII values. Is there a way I can read the data correctly using fread? Because text files are big, fread can give me a quicker solution.

BCP "SELECT 3,1 UNION ALL SELECT 9,13" queryout "Trial.txt" -c t"," -S"srvr" -U"login" -P"pwrd"

% In Matlab -->

    fid = fopen('Trial.txt','r') ;
    fread(fid)
    fclose(fid);

ASCII Output:

51                 % Ascii Char for 3 (http://www.asciitable.com/)
44                 % ...............,
49                 % ...............1
13                 % ...............carriage return
10
57
44
.......

Answer 1

You almost have it. Just use char after fread to interpret the read bytes as ASCII characters. Also add .' if you want a row vector instead of a column vector:

fid = fopen('Trial.txt','r');
chars = char(fread(fid)).';
fclose(fid);