Scanning strings in a string array

I see that if I declare a string between ' ', I can have access to each single character. For instance:

    >> x = 'abc';
    >> x(1) 
       ans = 'a'

While if I declare a string between " ", this doesn't happen:

    >> x = "abc";
    >> x(1) 
       ans = "abc"

Now, I need to scan an array of strings, the problem is that if the strings are between "", for example:

    A = ["abc", "def", "ghi", "lmn"];

then it results length(A) = 4 (as I want it to be), but then if x = A(1) (i.e. x = "abc"), it is not possible to access to each character of x, and I need to modify such strings, so I need access to x's characters. On the other hand, if I declare the array as follows:

    A = ['abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'lmn'];

it results that length(A) = 12 (I want it to be 4), and A(1) = 'a', and not 'abc' as I would like it to be! How do I overcome to this?

Answer 1

[Stalin Samuel]

A = {'abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'lmn'};
A{1}
ans = 'abc'

A{1}(1)  
  ans = 'a'

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

This is fully explained in the documentation. You use curly braces to access individual strings as char vector and then use normal indexing to access individual characters:

A = ["abc", "def", "ghi", "lmn"];
A{1}(1)  %returns 'a'

If starting from your x, you still need to use the curly braces:

A = ["abc", "def", "ghi", "lmn"];
x = A(1);
x{1}(2)   %returns 'b'

I'll admit it's a bit awkward.