MATLAB Error using textscan Param/value pairs must come in pairs. Also Error using textscan Badly formed format string.

The textscan() function expects certain parameters in a specific order. If these are not as expected, the following error is given:

Error using textscan
Param/value pairs must come in pairs.

From the documentation, this format should be as follows:

C = textscan(fileID,formatSpec)

or with the optional parameters set:

C = textscan(fileID, formatSpec, Name, Value);

I was getting this error as I had originally tried to define the 'formatspec' entry name - and this turns out to be unnecessary.

I ended up using the following formatSpec for the command:

format_spec = '%s%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f'

(Note no commas here)

I had also tried to use a date format string as follows:

date_format='%{yyyy-mm-dd_HH-MM-SS}D'; 

However this produced the following error:

Error using textscan
Badly formed format string.

I'm sure that the date_format string is correct, so I found that I can replace this with a simple %s to read the column into a string, and handle the data manually.