MatReader Class

public class MatReader : IDisposable

Public Class MatReader
	Implements IDisposable

// Let's say we would like to load different .mat files which can be found at:
// https://github.com/accord-net/framework/blob/development/Unit%20Tests/Accord.Tests.Math/Resources/mat/

// Let's assume they all currently reside in a "localPath" 
// folder. So let's start by trying to load a 32-bit matrix:
string pathInt32 = Path.Combine(localPath, "int32.mat");

// Create a .MAT reader for the file:
var reader = new MatReader(pathInt32);

// Let's check what is the name of the variable we need to load:
string[] names = reader.FieldNames; // should be { "a" }

// Ok, so we have to load the matrix called "a".

// However, what if we didn't know the matrix type in advance?
// In this case, we could use the non-generic version of Read:
object unknown = reader.Read("a");

// And we could check it's type through C#:
Type t = unknown.GetType(); // should be typeof(int[,])

// Now we could either cast it to the correct type or
// use the generic version of Read<> to read it again:
int[,] matrix = reader.Read<int[,]>("a");

// The a matrix should be equal to { 1, 2, 3, 4 }

// Let's say we would like to load different .mat files which can be found at:
// https://github.com/accord-net/framework/blob/development/Unit%20Tests/Accord.Tests.Math/Resources/mat/

// Let's assume they all currently reside in a "localPath" 
// folder. So let's start by trying to load a 8-bit matrix:
string pathInt8 = Path.Combine(localPath, "int8.mat");

// Create a .MAT reader for the file:
var reader = new MatReader(pathInt8);

// The variable in the file is called "arr"
sbyte[,] matrix = reader.Read<sbyte[,]>("arr");

// The arr matrix should be equal to { -128, 127 }

// (in case he didn't know the name of the variable,
// we would have inspected the FieldNames property:
string[] names = reader.FieldNames; // should contain "arr"

// Let's say we would like to load a .mat file
// called "simplestruct.mat". It can be found at
// https://github.com/accord-net/framework/blob/development/Unit%20Tests/Accord.Tests.Math/Resources/mat/simplestruct.mat

// Let's assume it currently resides in a "localPath" folder
string fileName = Path.Combine(localPath, "simplestruct.mat");

// Create a .MAT reader for the file:
var reader = new MatReader(fileName);

// We can extract some basic information about the file:
string description = reader.Description; // "MATLAB 5.0 MAT-file, Platform: PCWIN"
int version = reader.Version;     // 256
bool bigEndian = reader.BigEndian;   // false

// Enumerate the fields in the file
foreach (var field in reader.Fields)
    Console.WriteLine(field.Key); // "structure"

// We have the single following field
var structure = reader["structure"];

// Enumerate the fields in the structure
foreach (var field in structure.Fields)
    Console.WriteLine(field.Key); // "a", "string"

// Check the type for the field "a"
var aType = structure["a"].ValueType; // byte[,]

// Retrieve the field "a" from the file
var a = structure["a"].GetValue<byte[,]>();

// We can also do directly if we know the type in advance
var s = reader["structure"]["string"].GetValue<string>();