native2unicode - Convert numeric bytes to Unicode characters

Syntax

Description

unicodestr = native2unicode(bytes) takes a vector containing numeric values in the range [0,255] and converts these values as a stream of 8-bit bytes to Unicode characters. The stream of bytes is assumed to be in the MATLAB default character encoding scheme. Return value unicodestr is a char vector that has the same general array shape as bytes.

unicodestr = native2unicode(bytes, encoding) does the conversion with the assumption that the byte stream is in the character encoding scheme specified by the string encoding. encoding must be the empty string ('') or a name or alias for an encoding scheme. Some examples are 'UTF-8', 'latin1', 'US-ASCII', and 'Shift_JIS'. For common names and aliases, see the Web site http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets. If encoding is unspecified or is the empty string (''), the MATLAB default encoding scheme is used.

Note   If bytes is a char vector, it is returned unchanged.

Examples

This example begins with a vector of bytes in an unknown character encoding scheme. The user-written function detect_encoding determines the encoding scheme. If successful, it returns the encoding scheme name or alias as a string. If unsuccessful, it throws an error represented by an MException object, ME. The example calls native2unicode to convert the bytes to Unicode characters:

try
   enc = detect_encoding(bytes);
	   str = native2unicode(bytes, enc);
	   disp(str);
catch ME
	   rethrow(ME);
end

Note that the computer must be configured to display text in a language represented by the detected encoding scheme for the output of disp(str) to be correct.

See Also

unicode2native

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