MATLAB Programming

Strings
Store Arrays of Strings in a Cell Array
It is usually best to store an array of strings in a cell array instead of a
character array, especially if the strings are of different lengths. Strings in
a character array must be of equal length, which often requires padding the
strings with blanks. This is not necessary when using a cell array of strings
that has no such requirement.
The cellRecord below does not require padding the strings with spaces:
cellRecord = {'Allison Jones'; 'Development'; 'Phoenix'};
For more information: See “Cell Arrays of Strings” on page 2-40 in the
MATLAB Programming documentation.
Converting Between Strings and Cell Arrays
You can convert between standard character arrays and cell arrays of strings
using the cellstr and char functions:
charRecord = ['Allison Jones'; 'Development '; ...
'Phoenix '];
cellRecord = cellstr(charRecord);
Also, a number of the MATLAB string operations can be used with either
character arrays, or cell arrays, or both:
cellRecord2 = {'Brian Lewis'; 'Development'; 'Albuquerque'};
strcmp(charRecord, cellRecord2)
ans =
0
1
0
For more information: See “Converting to a Cell Array of Strings” on page
2-41 and “String Comparisons” on page 2-56 in the documentation.
Search and Replace Using Regular Expressions
Using regular expressions in MATLAB offers a very versatile way of searching
for and replacing characters or phrases within a string. See the help on these
functions for more information.
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