CELL2STR

CELL2STR converts a cell array of strings into a character array.

Description

CELL2STR converts a cell array of strings into a character array. The resulting character array is possible by padding the strings in each row with spaces.

Example
str = {'this' 'is' 'a' 'test' 'of' 'cell' '2' 'str'};
cell2str(str)

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.4 (R2007a)

[Kenneth Eaton]

How is this different from the following?...

>> str = {'this' 'is' 'a' 'test' 'of' 'cell' '2' 'str'};
>> char(str)

ans =

this
is
a
test
of
cell
2
str

[Jos (10584)]

Nice programming exercise for duplicating the built-in CHAR function. Please remove.

[us]

this is exactly what CHAR does - in one simple shot...
us

[Marco Cococcioni]

Although Jos and us are right, I think this function deserves to stay here, because its name is more intuitive that the built-in 'char', which is not expected to do the conversion. The high number of downloads of this function seems to confirm my opinion. Best regards, MC

[Markus Huber]

I didn't know CHAR, so if found it by searching for a conversion from cell to strings! File-Exchange is sometimes better than the Matlab Documentation... Maybe you should note CHAR in the description!

[Jan Simon]

I'd expect a function called Cell2Str to reply a string as [1 x N] CHAR vector and not a CHAR matrix.
The name of the built-in function CHAR is very equivalent to the other methods to convert values to a specific type: DOUBLE, SINGLE, LOGICAL, (U)INT8, (U)INT16, (U)INT32, (U)INT64.
Cell2Str has some potential for improvements: CELLFUN(@length) is much slower than CELLFUN('prodofdims'). The method fails for {M x N} cell strings or if a cell element contains a CHAR array. The input is not checked. The padding can be created faster in a FOR loop.
But if you start to optimize it, please replace the complete processing by a call of the fast and more powerful command CHAR.
The documentation of the code is well, a help section exists, but is lean. The program works. Therefore I give 2 stars inspite of the limited use.
I admit, that the number of downloads is impressive. But why is this function downloaded?

[Jan Simon]

PS: I've downloaded this file accidently 4 times, because it appears in the browser instead of the usual dialog for downloading and saving to disk.

[Alex]