how can a .mat file crash matlab ?

I've tried to load a .mat file (48 MB) that I got from a colleague found here and it crashed matlab altogether. This happens even if I change Matlab's path to the same folder where the file is at. What is going on? even if I assume that the file is corrupt this shouldn't happen... Any idea how to solve this? (this was tested on Matlab 2015b, win7 and win10 machines)

[Walter Roberson]

It crashes MATLAB R2014a on OS-X as well.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

I see a hint that it might contain the illegal variables

delta_uv- delta_uw. delta_vw/

When I look at the solutions suggested in http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/98890-how-do-i-recover-data-from-a-corrupt-mat-file

then I find that the splitmat complains that there is a zero-byte tag. It is not clear that the program is appropriate for the purpose, though, as the .mat is a -v7.3 whereas that solution was released during 7.2, before the new file format.

A poster in that solution suggested http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/42274-loadfixnames-loads-a-mat-file--fixing-invalid-names

I find that routine to not be able to fix the problem, which suggests that there are problems that are deeper than just a bad variable name.

That solution also mentions matzerofix which is intended to process files with the zero-tag error, which was something that dated from R14. I would not immediately expect it to be compatible with -v7.3 files. It did report 4 errors, two of which it had suggestions for; I do not know enough to say whether the suggestions have any hope of working with a -v7.3 file.

MATCAT is unable to analyze the file, which is not surprising as that tool is only for v5 files.

I don't think you are going to be able to load this file. I recommend you open a support case on this, as MATLAB should, as you rightly note, not crash when reading a .mat file.

[Adi Natan]

wow, thank you so much for the quick response!