PPMA_IO is a set of MATLAB M files which can read or write a PPMA (Portable Pixel Map ASCII) file, involving 3 NROW by NCOL integer arrays of RGB color information.
There are many graphics programs, such as XV and GIMP, that can display images in this formats, or translate them to other formats such as BMP, GIF, JPEG, MacPaint, X Window, and so on.
PBMA_IO is a MATLAB library which handles the Portable Bit Map format.
PGMA_IO is a MATLAB library which handles the Portable Gray Map format.
PPMA_IO is also available in a C++ version and a FORTRAN90 version
You can go up one level to the MATLAB source codes.