Equalities between strings and strings in cell arrays

I am trying to create a piece of code that checks the string value in a cell array and then assigns a numerical value to another cell based on the identity of that string.

However, no matter what equality function I try to use, I always get an error back or an inequality when both values are obviously the same. Can someone explain what is going on to me?

Here's the hunk of code that I am having trouble with. If the cell array 'C' and string 'C' are the same then I should get an output of 1.

>> tbl{row,2}(1)

ans =

    'C'

>> isequal(tbl{row,2}(1),'C') == 1

ans =

     0

Answer 1

[Andrei Bobrov]

try

isequal(tbl{row,2}{1},'C')

or

isequal(tbl{row,2}(1),{'C'})

Answer 2

[Jan]

This checks the fist character:

strncmp(tbl(row, 2), 'C', 1)

This compares the full string:

strcmp(tbl(row, 2), 'C')

Note, that row need not be scalar in both cases.