In the link about Octave (hope it is == to Matlab in this respect)
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/...td1632472.html
there is:
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>I would like to read an ascii data file with 3 columns of integers
>separated by a space, and an unknown number of rows into 3 vectors or a
>matrix with 3 columns.
Try
data = load ("-ascii", "yourfile.txt")
Ben
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HTH