Thread Subject: How to unformat a formatted string, remove new line

I'm trying to figure out the relationship between strings and formatted strings when it comes to escape characters. I have a string with a \n new line in it but I can't easily remove the new line with the string replace function (strrep). Of course I can tokenize and reconstruct the string but is there any way to convert a formatted string variable like myFormattedString back to myString as shown below?

>> myString = 'foo\nbar'
myString =

foo\nbar
>> myFormattedString = sprintf('%s',myString)
myFormattedString =

foo\nbar
>> myFormattedString = sprintf(myString)
myFormattedString =

foo
bar
>> strrep(myFormattedString, 'foo','bar')
ans =

bar
bar
>> strrep(myFormattedString, '\n','bar')
ans =

foo
bar %why was the new line not removed???


thanks,
Mike

"galdoor galdos" <mikesmaps@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hd2915$8ki$1@fred.mathworks.com...
> I'm trying to figure out the relationship between strings and formatted
> strings when it comes to escape characters. I have a string with a \n new
> line in it but I can't easily remove the new line with the string replace
> function (strrep). Of course I can tokenize and reconstruct the string
> but is there any way to convert a formatted string variable like
> myFormattedString back to myString as shown below?

*snip*

>>> strrep(myFormattedString, '\n','bar')
> ans =
>
> foo
> bar %why was the new line not removed???

Because once you've SPRINTFed the string, the literal string \n is replaced
with the newline character. In order to replace the newline character, use
it in your STRREP call.

myString = 'foo\nbar'
myFormattedString = sprintf(myString)
newline = sprintf('\n')
strrep(myFormattedString, newline, 'bar')

--
Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com
comp.soft-sys.matlab (CSSM) FAQ: http://matlabwiki.mathworks.com/MATLAB_FAQ