`char`

Converts numbers to characters, or text of several kinds to a char array.

Category: Language Fundamentals > Data Types

Syntax

c = char(n)

Converts character codes to characters.

c = char(C)

Converts a cell array of text to a padded char matrix, one row per cell.

c = char(S)

Converts a string array to a char array.

Description

For numeric input char(65) is 'A' and char(65:70) is 'ABCDEF'; the inverse is double('A'). Codes above 255 give Unicode characters.

For several pieces of text, char builds a rectangular matrix by padding each row with blanks on the right, so char({'a','bcd'}) is a 2-by-3 matrix. This matrix can be turned back into a cell array of words with cellstr.

Input arguments

n: Numeric array of character codes (nonnegative integers).
C: Cell array of character vectors or strings.
S: String array.

Output arguments

c: Char array. Shorter rows are padded with blanks to the length of the longest.

Example

Codes and words

char(72:76)
char({'a','bcd'})
double('A')

Output

ans = 'HIJKL'
ans = 2×3 char array

    'a  '
    'bcd'
ans = 65

char