readm:

Syntax:	readm ( FILENAME )
	readm ( FILENAME, SIZE )

Description:

	Readm reads a generic matrix of data from the file denoted by
	the string argument FILENAME. The return value is the newly
	created matrix. The second, and optional, argument is a
	two-element matrix that specifies the size ([NR, NC]) of the
	matrix to read. 

	If SIZE is _not_ specified, then the matrix is filled row-wise
	with the input data. Otherwise (SIZE is specified), the matrix
	if filled column-wise, as the input is read.

	The file format is generic ASCII. The rows of the matrix are
	separated by newlines, and the columns are separated by
	whitespace. Unnecessary newlines, either before, or after the
	data will confuse readm, and will probably result in an error
	message. Only one matrix can be stored in a file. If you need
	to store more than one matrix in a file, use write(), and
	read(). 

	Readm can only read in numeric matrices. The result of reading
	in string matrices is undefined.

	Example:

	1 2 3 4
	5 6 7 8
	9 10 11 12

	The above values in a file called "test" would be read in like:

	> a = readm("test")
	 a =
	 matrix columns 1 thru 4
	        1          2          3          4  
	        5          6          7          8  
	        9         10         11         12  

	Readm exists to read in data from other programs. In many
	cases a simple awk script will filter the other programs
	output into one or more columns of data. readm() will read the
	data into the matrix, then the matrix can be reshaped if
	necessary.


Notes:

	Readm has no idea how many rows are in the matrix it is
	reading. This is because readm can work with pipes and process
	output where it gets the matrix as a stream. Readm uses a
	heuristic to guess how many rows of the matrix to allocate at
	one time. A second, optional argument, NROW can be specified
	if the heuristic does not yield the performance you
	desire. The heuristic is purposely memory conservative.

		readm ( "filename" , NROW )

See Also: reshape, getline, open, read, readb, write, writeb, writem
