INTRODUCTION
With today’s post I would like to share a Matlab script I used often to compare lists of ID numbers stored in separate text files. The ID numbers can be of anything: oil and gas wells, mining diamond drill hole locations, gravity or resistivity measurement stations, outcrop locations, you name it. And the script will handle any combination of ASCII characters (numbers, letters, etcetera).
I included below here some test files for you to try with the code, which is in the next section. Please refer to the comment section in the code for usage and file description. Have fun, and if you try it on your lists, let me know how it works for you.
TEST FILES
These files are in doc format; they need to be downloaded and saved as plain txt files. Test1 and Test2 contain 2 short lists of (fake) Canadian Oil and Gas wells; the former is the result of a search using a criterion (wells inside a polygonal area), the latter is a list of wells that have digital wireline logs. Test3 and Test4 are short lists of (fake) diamond drill holes.
*** Notice that script is setup to compare list in Test2.txt against list in Test1.txt and not the other way around. If using this on your own lists, you will have to decide in advance which subset of wells you are interested in.
THE SCRIPT
Here is the code: