Limit length of a string

Hello,

How can I limit the lengt of strings that I print out ?

text1 contains a sting of length 7 to 25, but I want to print a maximum of 18 charactes.

I have tried the following, but it does not work for text1:

text1='012345678901234567890123456789';
text2='01234567';
sprintf('%-18s',text1)

ans = '012345678901234567890123456789'

sprintf('%-18s',text2)

ans = '01234567          '

In the end it should look like a table.

Best regards

Christian

Answer 1

[Christian Günther]

Hello,

I've found the solution myself:

with this command it gests truncated to 18 characters:

sprintf('%+18.18s',text1)

Answer 2

[Matt J]

text1='012345678901234567890123456789';
text2='01234567';

text1(19:end)=''

text1 = '012345678901234567'

text2(19:end)=''

text2 = '01234567'

[Christian Günther]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.

It is working, but I need to overwrite each string before using it.

Thanks !!

[Matt J]

Wrap the steps in some function,

text1='012345678901234567890123456789';
text2='01234567';

trunctext(text1)

012345678901234567

trunctext(text2)

01234567

function trunctext(T)

  T(19:end)='';
  disp(T)

end

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/extractbefore.html

This can be used in an expression without modifying the variable. Also it can be used with string() objects as well

[Christian Günther]

this is failing for text2:

text2='01234567';
sprintf('%+18s',extractBefore(text2,18))
% Error using extractBefore (line 51)
% Numeric value exceeds the number of characters in element 1.