Help with splitting a string into a character array.

Let's say I have a string s='Potato'.

How would I split that up into an array so that it looks like t='P, o, t, a, t, o'?

I'm currently doing it like this:

%%Choose word

word=datasample(wordbank,1)

 %identify length of word
 wordlength=strlength(word)

 sol = split(word,"")

The only problem with doing it this way is that there are two blank spots and the beginning and end of the character array. It looks like this when outputted:

 "" "P" "o" "t" "a" "t" "o" ""

How can I split it so that the blank values at the beginning and end aren't there?

[Fady Samann]

the string is already an array of char. So, s(1) is 'P'. However, if you want to remove the blanks, you have to do it by a 'for' loop and test for blanks with 'if' condition.

s=' Potato ';

c=1;

for i=1:length(s)

if s(i)~=' '

new_s(c)=s(i);

c=c+1;

end

end

Answer 1

[Mischa Kim]

You could use

s = 'Potato';
t = num2cell(s) 
t =
1×6 cell array
  {'P'}    {'o'}    {'t'}    {'a'}    {'t'}    {'o'}

[Benjamin Carpenter]

Thank you!

[Akash Yadav]

isn't num2cell or num2string is used on a number array to convert it to string or cell array? what explains the working of num2cell on a string?

[Stephen23]

"isn't num2cell or num2string is used on a number array to convert it to string or cell array?"

No, NUM2CELL splits the elements of the input array into cells of a cell array. It does not "convert" anything: all of the original data still exists with its original class, just (in general) in more but smaller (e.g. scalar) arrays than beforehand.

"what explains the working of num2cell on a string?"

NUM2CELL operates the same regardless of the input class (this is clearly documented in the NUM2CELL documentation, where it lists all of the permitted input classes):

str = ["hello","world"]

str = 1×2 string array
    "hello"    "world"

out = num2cell(str)

out = 1×2 cell array
    {["hello"]}    {["world"]}

Storing scalar strings in a cell array should be avoided.

PS: the name is likely a relic of when MATLAB was young and only supported numeric arrays.

PPS: NUM2STRING is not a MATLAB function:

num2string(pi)

Unrecognized function or variable 'num2string'.