two identical cell arrays treat my char inputs differently - any idea?

|Hi

I read a lot about strings and inverted commas but I could not find the answer to my problem.

Believe me or not, I have two cell arrays which handle strings different.

Here, an extreme, but real example.

>> AA {1,1} = '''''''xyz''''''' and I get as answer >> AA {1,1} ans = '''xyz'''

>> BB {1,1} = '''''''xyz''''''' and I get as answer >> BB {1,1} ans = '''xyz'''

So far, that's fine.

BUT in the variables view I have

AA    row 1, column 1  '''''''xyz''''''' (seven)

BB      row 1, column 1    '''xyz''' (three)

The problem is that I cannot access them in the same way and I have NO idea why my inputs get treated differently.

Any ideas?

Thanks so much!

Claudia

[Matt Fig]

What is variables view?

Answer 1

[Matthew Eicholtz]

The only way I was able to reproduce your results was to initialize the AA cell array with size greater than (1,1). For example,

AA = cell(2);
AA {1,1} = '''''''xyz'''''''
BB {1,1} = '''''''xyz'''''''

Then, in the Variable Editor, it looks like you described (7 quotes on AA cell). However, the string stored in the cell array is still the same.

>> AA{1,1}
ans =
  '''xyz'''

So in this case, the way it looks in the Variable Editor does not affect any processing you may want to do on the string.

[Claudia]

Hi Matt,

thanks for your explanation.

However,I couldn't access the data in the same way and also interesting, sometimes I had for the same cell array sometimes 7, sometimes 3 quotes.

But I found a solution - if I load my dataset within a function, I always can access single data in the same way.

Cheers, Claudia

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

I can't reproduce. I do (just copying and pasting your code):

AA {1,1} = '''''''xyz'''''''
BB {1,1} = '''''''xyz'''''''

and in the command window I get:

AA = 
    ''''xyz''''
BB = 
    ''''xyz''''

In the variables editor, it looks the same as the command window - 3 ' on each side, not 7.

[Claudia]

Hi, thanks for the answer. That's the trouble with it. It doesn't happen always. Cheers, Claudia