strmatch is not recommended. Use strncmp instead.

To find exact matches for a character vector, use strcmp. For example, if your code currently contains lines such as these:

list = {'max','minimax','maximum','max'} 
x = strmatch('max',list,'exact')

Then, MATLAB returns the following to indicate that the first and fourth array elements are the only exact matches for max:

x =

     1
     4

Replace the original code with this:

list = {'max','minimax','maximum','max'}
x = strcmp(list,'max')

MATLAB now returns the following logical array. MATLAB returns true (logical 1) to indicate that the first and fourth list elements are max and false (logical 0) to indicate that the second and third list elements are not max.

x =

     1     0     0     1

If you prefer for MATLAB to return the numeric indices of list, use find, as follows:

list = {'max','minimax','maximum','max'}
x = find(strcmp(list,'max'))

Now, MATLAB returns the following to indicate that the first and fourth array elements are the only exact matches for max:

x =

     1     4

To find values that contain a given character vector, rather than those that are an exact match, use strncmp.