join 2 strings together to 1

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Patrick Benz
Patrick Benz on 5 Mar 2021
Commented: Patrick Benz on 5 Mar 2021
Good Morning all,
i need help manipulating strings.
I know from practically every other program that you can put strings together in one way or another. So very simple, make 1 out of 2.
In Matlab I despair of it.I have a variable 'job' (contains something like: "Biegung_35_") and a string 'Evaluation.txt'. In order to import the content of the txt into matlab either via importfile or readtable, I would like to combine these two strings. I don't mean the kind of assembly that join or cat does, so that I have a 1x2 string array.
It should look like this 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt' in a single string.
Please help me

Accepted Answer

Stephen23
Stephen23 on 5 Mar 2021
Edited: Stephen23 on 5 Mar 2021
Your example data (you need to learn the difference between string arrays and character arrays):
A = "Biegung_35_"; % scalar string.
B = 'Evaluation.txt'; % character vector.
Here are six very basic approaches:
A+B % returns scalar string, uses overloaded string operation PLUS.
ans = "Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt"
strcat(A,B) % returns scalar string.
ans = "Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt"
sprintf("%s",A,B) % returns scalar string, which is what you asked for.
ans = "Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt"
sprintf('%s',A,B) % returns char vector, which is what your example actually shows.
ans = 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt'
[A{1},B] % returns char vector, uses char content of string element.
ans = 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt'
[char(A),B] % returns char vector, converts string to char.
ans = 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt'
The SPRINTF approach is the most robust as it lets you specify exactly the type of the output that you will get (and not rely on some magic coersion and an obscure list of type "rules" in the documentation).
Pointlessly complex approaches (if you see someone use these, run for the hills!):
join([A,B],'') % ugh, the stuff of nightmares.
ans = "Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt"
tmp = [A,B];
[tmp{:}] % comma-separated list to get content of string array.
ans = 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt'
cell2mat(cellfun(@char,{A,B},'uni',0)) % nested ouch.
ans = 'Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt'
compose("%s%s",A,B) % hmm.... maybe this isn't so bad afterall.
ans = "Biegung_35_Evaluation.txt"
  1 Comment
Patrick Benz
Patrick Benz on 5 Mar 2021
Thx very much, this saves my day.
And to be honest, I didn't even think about simply using A+B for strings :D

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More Answers (1)

KSSV
KSSV on 5 Mar 2021
Read about join, strcat. You can also achieve the same using:
str = ['Biegung_35_' ,'Evaluation.txt'] ;
  1 Comment
Stephen23
Stephen23 on 5 Mar 2021
Edited: Stephen23 on 5 Mar 2021
Note that the first text sample given in the question is a scalar string, the second text is a character vector.
So using the examples from the question, this answer will coerce the character vector into a scalar string and return a 1x2 string array:
str = ["Biegung_35_" ,'Evaluation.txt']
str = 1×2 string array
"Biegung_35_" "Evaluation.txt"

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