char

Converting a numeric array to a character array

Usage

char(A)

• A should be a numeric array, character array, or function handle.
• If A is a numeric array (e.g., double, logical, complex double), the entries are converted to characters.
• Before the conversion, doubles are rounded to integers. For complex doubles, real parts are rounded and imaginary parts are ignored. Negative numbers and NaN are substituted by zeros, and Inf are substituted by 65535 (the maximum value of UInt16).
• If A is the function handle of an anonymous function, the function expression is converted to a character vector.
• If A is a handle of other function types, the function name is converted to a character vector.
• If A is a character array or empty, A is unchanged.
• Non-printable characters (e.g., ASCII codes 0 - 31) are displayed as white-spaces.

char(S1, S2, ..., Sn)

• It converts the input arguments to character arrays and concatenating them vertically.
• If an input argument is multi-dimensional, it is first reshaped to a matrix (i.e., 2D array) before concatenation.
• If the input arguments have different widths after reshaping, the reshaped arrays are padded with trailing white-spaces to match the sizes.
• Non-printable characters (ASCII values 0 - 31) are displayed as white-spaces.

Unicode Characters

When the array A is converted to a character array using char(), each of its rows is converted to a row of characters. In the example below, the row [55357, 56985, 32.000, 77.000, 89.000, 32.000, 67.000, 65.000, 82.000] is converted to '🚙 MY CAR'. Note that the vector before conversion has 9 entries, whereas the vector after conversion has 8. This is because the numbers 55357 and 56958 are combined to form '🚙'. From this example, we see that arrays before and after conversion may have different sizes.

Input

a = [55357, 56985, 32.000, 77.000, 89.000, 32.000, 67.000, 65.000, 82.000];
length(a)
c = char(a)
length(c)

Output

ans = 
 9.0000

c = 
🚙 MY CAR

ans = 
 8.0000

Example

• Trailing white spaces will be appended if not all row vectors have the same lengths after conversion. This is illustrated in the example below. The first row can be converted to a vector of 8 characters. (55357 and 56985 are combined to form one emoji character.) However, the second row must be converted to a vector of 9 characters. Hence, a white space is appended to the first row, so that the two rows have the same widths.

Input

a = [55357, 56985, 32.000, 77.000, 89.000, 32.000, 67.000, 65.000, 82.000];
b = [83.000, 79.00, 32.000, 67.00, 79.00, 79.000, 76.000, 33.000, 33.00];
char(a,b)

Output

ans = 
🚙 MY CAR 
SO COOL!!