7.2: Why Text Matters in MATLAB
- Page ID
- 136667
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MATLAB is often introduced as a tool for numerical computing, but that does not mean it only works with numbers. Text is everywhere in engineering and science. A data file might include column labels. A sensor system might store status messages such as "ON", "OFF", or "ERROR". A user might type a command such as "Add 12,5". A report might need formatted sentences that include calculated values.
Text processing is the part of programming where we create, compare, search, edit, and combine pieces of text. MATLAB gives us many built-in functions for this. The most important first step is understanding the two common ways MATLAB represents text: strings and character vectors.
|
Type of text |
Created with |
Example |
Big idea |
|
String scalar |
Double quotation marks |
"Hello" |
A modern MATLAB text type. Convenient for many text operations. |
|
String array |
Square brackets with strings |
["Mercury", "Jupiter"] |
An array whose elements are strings. |
|
Character vector |
Single quotation marks |
'Hello' |
An older but still very common text type. Behaves like an array of characters. |
Double quotation marks create strings. Single quotation marks create character vectors. They may look similar when printed, but MATLAB stores and handles them differently.