readcell function returns "failed to convert character code" error

Hi,

I have a cell array with 153 cells.

Each cell has inside a vector whose size might vary from a few thousands of collumns to even ~30M collumns.

The numbers in the vectors are double.

I use the command

writecell(trace_set,file_name) 

to write the 'trace_set' cell array inside a file either '.csv' or '.txt'.

Creating the file takes a long time ( ~30min to 38min) and I end up with a files of ~15GB.

When I am trying to read back these files using the following command

readcell(fname)

I end up always with the following error:

Failed to convert character code.

This happens for either the '.txt' or '.csv' files.

How can this be resolved?

I am using Matlab R2021b on Centos 7.

Thank you in advance for the help.

Kind regards,

Nassos

Answer 1

[David Hill]

Just use save command.

[nassos]

Yes, using

save(file_name,'trace_set','-v7.3');

and saving in a '.mat' file, solved the issue as the file is now only ~5GB and the time to save it dropped to only 3min.

And I am able to load only individual cells of the cell array too.

Thanks @David Hill!

-Nassos

p.s. If anyone wants to chime in on why the writecell-readcell combination fails, feel free.