erase

Delete substrings within strings

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Syntax

newStr = erase(str,match)

Description

example

newStr = erase(str,match) deletes all occurrences of match in str. The erase function returns the remaining text as newStr.

If match is a string array or a cell array of character vectors, then erase deletes every occurrence of every element of match in str. The str and match arguments do not need to be the same size.

Examples

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Open Live Script

Create a string array and delete substrings from it. Starting in R2017a, you can create strings using double quotes.

str = ["the quick brown fox jumps";
       "over the lazy dog"]
str = 2x1 string
    "the quick brown fox jumps"
    "over the lazy dog"

Delete the substring "the " from str. The erase function deletes both instances.

newStr = erase(str,"the ")
newStr = 2x1 string
    "quick brown fox jumps"
    "over lazy dog"

Delete multiple substrings from str.

match = ["the ","quick ","lazy "];
newStr = erase(str,match)
newStr = 2x1 string
    "brown fox jumps"
    "over dog"
Open Live Script

Create a character vector. Delete the substring, ' World', including the space character. 

chr = 'Hello World'
chr = 
'Hello World'

newChr = erase(chr,' World')
newChr = 
'Hello'

Input Arguments

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Input text, specified as a string array, a character vector, or a cell array of character vectors.

Text to delete, specified as a string array, a character vector, or a cell array of character vectors.

Tips

  • To delete multiple occurrences of a match when the occurrences overlap, use the strrep function. erase only deletes the first occurrence when occurrences overlap.

Extended Capabilities

See Also

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Topics

Introduced in R2016b

MATLAB Documentation
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