title: How do I read a delimited file with strings/numbers with Octave?
body: <p>I am trying to read a text file containing digits and strings using Octave. The file format is something like this:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
  A B C<br/>
  a 10 100<br/>
  b 20 200<br/>
  c 30 300<br/>
  d 40 400<br/>
  e 50 500<br/>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>but the delimiter can be space, tab, comma or semicolon. The textread function works fine if the delimiter is space/tab:</p>
  
  <p><code>[A,B,C] = textread ('test.dat','%s %d %d','headerlines',1)</code></p>
  
  <p>However it does not work if delimiter is comma/semicolon. I tried to use dklmread:</p>
  
  <p><code>dlmread ('test.dat',';',1,0)</code></p>
  
  <p>but it does not work because the first column is a string.
  Basically, with textread I can't specify the delimiter and with dlmread I can't specify the format of the first column. Not with the versions of these functions in Octave, at least. Has anybody ever had this problem before?</p>