Programming and Data Types

Character Arrays (Strings)

This chapter explains MATLAB's support for string data. It describes the two ways that MATLAB represents strings:

• Character Arrays
• Cell Arrays of Strings

It also describes the operations that you can perform on string data under the following topics:

• String Comparisons
• Searching and Replacing
• String/Numeric Conversion

This table shows the string functions, which are located in the directory named strfun in the MATLAB Toolbox.

Category	Function	Description
General	blanks	String of blanks
	cellstr	Create cell array of strings from character array
	char	Create character array (string)
	deblank	Remove trailing blanks
	eval	Execute string with MATLAB expression
String Tests	iscellstr	True for cell array of strings
	ischar	True for character array
	isletter	True for letters of alphabet.
	isspace	True for whitespace characters.
String Operations	findstr	Find one string within another
	lower	Convert string to lowercase
	strcat	Concatenate strings
	strcmp	Compare strings
	strcmpi	Compare strings, ignoring case
	strjust	Justify string
	strmatch	Find matches for string
	strncmp	Compare first N characters of strings
	strncmpi	Compare first N characters, ignoring case
	strrep	Replace string with another
	strtok	Find token in string
	strvcat	Concatenate strings vertically
	upper	Convert string to uppercase
String to Number Conversion	double	Convert string to numeric codes
	int2str	Convert integer to string
	mat2str	Convert matrix to eval'able string
	num2str	Convert number to string
	sprintf	Write formatted data to string
	str2double	Convert string to double-precision value
	str2mat	Form character matrix from strings
	str2num	Convert string to number
	sscanf	Read string under format control
Base Number Conversion	base2dec	Convert base B string to decimal integer
	bin2dec	Convert binary string to decimal integer
	dec2base	Convert decimal integer to base B string
	dec2bin	Convert decimal integer to binary string
	dec2hex	Convert decimal integer to hexadecimal string
	hex2dec	Convert hexadecimal string to decimal integer
	hex2num	Convert IEEE hexadecimal to double-precision number

Making Efficient Use of Memory

Character Arrays