What Is a Data File and How Do You Generate It in MATLAB?

[balogun]

Homework Statement

I have a retake in MATLAB and in my briefing they said i will have to generate a data file and analyse it.Can someone please tell me what a data file is and how you generate it.
I have used the help function in MATLAB but did not find it very useful .
Thanks in advance.

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

Used help function but not useful.

 

[chroot]

Your question is so hopelessly vague that no one here will be able to help you with it. MATLAB includes many functions that can be used to generate data sets, but you've given us absolutely no information on the kind of data you want. It also includes functions which can be used to write arrays out to files on the disk.

- Warren

 

[balogun]

...

Sorry didn't know there were many different kinds of datafiles.I don't really know the type of datafile his going to give so i thought there should be some kind of general method.But from the last coursework i was given he asked for an ascii datafile.

 

[chroot]

Is the data supposed to be a sound, or a picture, or a one-dimensional random signal? What's the distribution supposed to look like? What's the meaning of the data? Is it supposed to be one column in a text file or twelve? One point or ten billion points? Floating-point or fixed-point or integers?

You've given us no information at all about how to help you. It's as if you went into a library and told the librarian you were looking for "a book."

- Warren

 

[Ouabache]

As chroot has mentioned, it would be helpful if you described an example.

A data file , as you have described it, is information that can be 'used by' (input) or 'generated by' (output) a computer program.

Since you want to generate a data file, you are interested in input/output syntax. That's true for any computer language, however for MATLAB it may begin with something like ---> FID_out=fopen('test_io.dat",'w');
Here's http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/025D2855-5E98-42A6-A415-B408855187CE/0/tutorial05.pdf that illustrates this concept.