MATLAB Avoiding "Out of Memory" Error: Writing Values to Text File

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The discussion revolves around a user encountering an "out of memory" error in MATLAB while trying to write multiple 7-element vectors to a text file. The user initially attempts to store all values in an array before writing, leading to memory issues. To resolve this, they seek advice on appending new values to the file without overwriting existing data. A solution is suggested to open the file in append mode using 'a+' and to write data in a loop, ensuring the file is only closed after all data has been written. The key takeaway is to manage file operations correctly to avoid overwriting and to optimize memory usage.
smk037
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I have been writing a program to compute and change a value a great number of times and writes each value into a file

I did this by continuously storing each value (which is a 7 element vector) into an array, and then writing that into a file using the cvswrite function

The problem I am having is that the array that the array eventually grows to the size that MATLAB gives me an "out of memory" error

so, to fix this, I have been trying to write each value into the .txt file, closing the file, computing the next vector into the same vector that it was computed from (to avoid the memory error), and writing it to the same file, but I can't seem to get it to work

I just end up overwriting the file each time

Is there anyway to get the next vector to print to the next line of the text file, as opposed to just overwriting the initial value in the text file?

any ideas?
Thank you.
 
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You can open the file with fopen(filename,'a+') and after that fprintf to write to the end of the file.
 
thanks for the advice

ok, so I've been trying to do something like this

x = [1 2 3 4 5 6]
y = [6 5 4 3 2 1]
fid = fopen('exp.txt', 'wt');
fprintf(fid, '%s\n', y);
fclose(fid)

but again, each time I run the code, the value just gets overwritten
 
smk037 said:
thanks for the advice

ok, so I've been trying to do something like this

x = [1 2 3 4 5 6]
y = [6 5 4 3 2 1]
fid = fopen('exp.txt', 'wt');
fprintf(fid, '%s\n', y);
fclose(fid)

but again, each time I run the code, the value just gets overwritten

If you're running this particular block of code repeatedly to generate your file then of course the data will be rewritten. At the end you're closing the file, but when you loop around again you're opening the file and rewriting its contents.

A simple example might help. Suppose that I want to create a file with a list of numbers in it; for the sake of argument, suppose I want to use Matlab to create a file "test.txt" that contains integers from one to ten. An easy way to do it is to use a for loop:

Code:
% First, open the file 'test.txt' for writing.

fid = fopen('test.txt', 'wt');

% Now comes the for loop. At each step of the loop we assign a value to x
% and write this value to the file. The loop starts at x = 1 and continues
% to x = 10

for i=1:10
    x = i;
    fprintf(fid, '%6.2f\n', x);
end

% Now that the loop is finished and we have written the data to the file, 
% close the file.

fclose(fid)

The important point to note is that you should close the file only once you've finished adding data to it, not after you add each data point. You should easily be able to modify the above example to work with your array.
 

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