Programming and Data Types

Converting Characters to Numeric Values

Character arrays store each character as a 16-bit numeric value. Use the double function to convert strings to their numeric values, and char to revert to character representation.

• name = double(name)
  name =
      84  104  111  109  97  115  32  82  46  32  76  101  101
  
  name = char(name)
  name =
     Thomas R. Lee
  

Use str2num to convert a character array to the numeric value represented by that string.

• str = '37.294e-1';
  
  val = str2num(str)
  val =
      3.7294
  

Creating Two-Dimensional Character Arrays

Cell Arrays of Strings