char

Character array

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Description

A character array is a sequence of characters, just as a numeric array is a sequence of numbers. A typical use is to store a short piece of text as a row of characters in a character vector.

Creation

You can create a character vector using single quotation marks.

C = 'Hello, world'

C =

    'Hello, world'

If you have an array of a different data type, you can convert it to a character array using the char function, described below.

Syntax

C = char(A)
C = char(A1,...,An)
C = char(D)
C = char(D,fmt)
C = char(D,fmt,locale)

Description

example

C = char(A) converts array A into a character array.

example

C = char(A1,...,An) converts the arrays A1,...,An into a single character array. After conversion to characters, the input arrays become rows in C. The char function pads rows with blank spaces as needed. If any input array is an empty character array, then the corresponding row in C is a row of blank spaces.

The input arrays A1,...,An cannot be string arrays, cell arrays, or categorical arrays.

A1,...,An can be of different sizes and shapes.

example

C = char(D) converts a datetime, duration, or calendar duration array into a character array in the format specified by the Format property of D. The output contains one date or duration in each row.

example

C = char(D,fmt) represents dates or durations in the specified format, such as 'HH:mm:ss'.

C = char(D,fmt,locale) represents dates or durations in the specified locale, such as 'en_US'. The locale affects the language used to represent character vectors such as month and day names.

Input Arguments

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Input array, specified as a numeric array, a character array, a cell array of character arrays, a categorical array, or a string array.

  • If A is a numeric array, then char converts numbers into characters. Valid numeric values range from 0 to 65535 and correspond to Unicode® code units. Values from 0 to 127 also correspond to 7-bit ASCII characters. The char function:

    • Rounds nonintegers toward zero.

    • Treats values less than 0 as 0.

    • Treats values greater than 65535 as 65535.

  • If A is a character array, then char returns A unaltered.

  • If A is a cell array of character arrays, then char converts the cell array to a character array. Each row from each character array in the cell array becomes a row in C, automatically padded with blank spaces as needed.

    • If A is a multidimensional cell array, then char collapses the output into a two-dimensional character array. For example, if A is a 2-by-2-by-2-by-2 cell array, then the output character array C has 16 rows.

  • If A is a categorical array, then char converts each element of A to a row of a character array, in column order.

  • If A is a string array, then char converts the string array to a character array. char converts each string element of A to a character vector, and then concatenates the vectors to produce a character array, automatically padded with blank spaces as needed. Since char converts each string to a character vector, the size of the output character array is different from the size of the string array.

Example: char(65) converts the integer 65 to the character A.

Input date and time, specified as a datetime or duration array.

Data Types: datetime | duration | calendarDuration

Date and time format, specified as [], a character vector, or a string scalar. If you specify [], then char represents input D in the format specified by the Format property of D.

The supported formats depend on the data type of D.

  • datetime formats can include combinations of units and delimiters, such as 'yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS'. For details, see the Format property for datetime arrays.

  • duration formats are either single characters ('y', 'd', 'h', 'm', or 's') or one of these combinations:

    • 'dd:hh:mm:ss'

    • 'hh:mm:ss'

    • 'mm:ss'

    • 'hh:mm'

    • Any of the above, with up to nine S characters to indicate fractional second digits, such as 'hh:mm:ss.SSSS'

  • calendarDuration formats can include combinations of the characters 'y', 'q', 'm', 'w', 'd', and 't' in order from the largest to the smallest unit of time, such as 'ym'.

For more information on the duration and calendarDuration formats, see Set Date and Time Display Format.

Locale represented in the output, specified as a character vector or a string scalar. The locale affects the language used to represent certain components of dates and times, such as month names.

locale can be:

  • 'system', to specify your system locale.

  • A character vector in the form xx_YY, where xx is a lowercase ISO 639-1 two-letter code that specifies a language, and YY is an uppercase ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code that specifies a country.

The locale input argument can be any of the values accepted by the 'Locale' name-value pair argument for the datetime function.

Example: 'en_US'

Example: 'ja_JP'

Output Arguments

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Output array, returned as a character array. Character arrays can have any size, but their most typical use is for storing pieces of text as character vectors.

MATLAB® stores all characters as Unicode characters using the UTF-16 encoding. For more information on Unicode, see Unicode.

Examples

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Open Live Script

Convert a numeric array to a character array. 

A = [77 65 84 76 65 66];
C = char(A)
C = 
'MATLAB'

The integers from 32 to 127 correspond to printable ASCII characters. However, the integers from 0 to 65535 also correspond to Unicode® characters. You can convert integers to their corresponding Unicode representations using the char function.

For example, the number 8451 corresponds to the symbol for degrees Celsius. Convert 8451 using char.

C = char(8451)
C = 
'℃'
Open Live Script

Convert multiple arrays into a single character array. The input arrays need not have the same shape. 

A1 = [65 66; 67 68];
A2 = 'abcd';
C = char(A1,A2)
C = 3x4 char array
    'AB  '
    'CD  '
    'abcd'

Because the input arrays do not have the same number of columns, char pads the rows from A1 with blanks. 

whos C
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class    Attributes

  C         3x4                24  char
Open Live Script

Create a string scalar. Starting in R2017a, you can create string scalars using double quotes. MATLAB® also displays strings with double quotes.

A = "Pythagoras"
A = 
"Pythagoras"

Convert A to a character vector using the char function. MATLAB displays character vectors with single quotes.

C = char(A)
C = 
'Pythagoras'
Open Live Script

Create a duration array.

D = hours(23:25) + minutes(8) + seconds(1.2345)
D = 1x3 duration
   23.134 hr   24.134 hr   25.134 hr

Convert D to a character array.

C = char(D)
C = 3x9 char array
    '23.134 hr'
    '24.134 hr'
    '25.134 hr'

C is a character array that represents one duration value per row.

Specify the format of the duration values represented by C.

C = char(D,'hh:mm')
C = 3x5 char array
    '23:08'
    '24:08'
    '25:08'

Extended Capabilities

See Also

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Topics

Introduced before R2006a

MATLAB Documentation

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