MATLAB Programming

Characters and Strings
Function Description Example
dec2hex
dec2bin
dec2base
Convert a positive integer to a character type of
hexadecimal base.
Convert a positive integer to a character type of
binary base.
Convert a positive integer to a character type of
any base from 2 through 36.
[72 105] → '48 69'
[72 105] → '1001000
1101001'
[72 105] → '110
151' (base set to 8)
Converting to a Character Equivalent
The char function converts integers to Unicode character codes and returns a
string composed of the equivalent characters:
x = [77 65 84 76 65 66];
char(x)
ans =
MATLAB
Converting to a String of Numbers
The int2str, num2str, andmat2str functions convert numeric values to
strings where each character represents a separate digit of the input value.
The int2str and num2str functions are often useful for labeling plots. For
example, the following lines use num2str to prepare automated labels for the
x-axis of a plot:
function plotlabel(x, y)
plot(x, y)
str1 = num2str(min(x));
str2 = num2str(max(x));
out = ['Value of f from ' str1 ' to ' str2];
xlabel(out);
Converting to a Specific Radix
Another class of conversion functions changes numeric values into strings
representing a decimal value in another base, such as binary or hexadecimal
representation. This includes dec2hex, dec2bin, anddec2base.
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