Matlab Characters and Strings

Characters and Strings

character and string are both data types for storing text; string was introduced in R2016b.

Different Storage Models

• A character is analogous to a single value in a numeric array: every character is exactly 2 bytes, and its size equals the number of characters
• A string is analogous to a numeric array taken as a whole: it consumes far more memory than a char containing the same characters, and its size is 1

a = 'hello'
% a =
%     'hello'

b = "hello"
% b =
%     "hello"

whos
%   Name      Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes
%   a         1x5                10  char
%   b         1x1               164  string

Different Construction Syntax

• A character is created with single quotes ''
• A string is created with double quotes "", or with the string function

Different Methods

Because they are different classes, character and string have different methods, each tailored to their data layout. For instance, to get a text’s length, use length for a character and strlength for a string.