Reads numbers with comma as a decimal separator from CSV files.

read_improper_csv.m

% -- DATA = read_improper_csv(FILE, NROWS, NCOLUMNS, DELIM, SKIP_LINES)
function data=read_improper_csv(file, nrows, ncolumns, delim=";", header_lines=0)
	
	if (nargin() < 3 || nargin() > 5)
  	print_usage ();
	endif
	
	data = textscan (fopen(file, 'r'), "%s", "Delimiter", delim, "HeaderLines", header_lines);
	data = cell2mat(data);
	data = str2double(strrep(data,',','.'));
	data = reshape(data, ncolumns, nrows); % elements are accessed in column-major order
	data = transpose(data);

endfunction

See the following question on StackOverflow for the motivation behind this script.

How to read CSV files with GNU Octave if the delimiter is ;?