Strings as matrix:

The matrix can be generated, that consists of strings in each row. Therefore, essentially it is created as a column vector of strings, but the final result is that this would be considered as a matrix in which each and every element is a character:

>> wordmat = ['Hello';'Howdy']

wordmat =

Hello

Howdy

>> size(wordmat)

ans =

2    5

This generated a 2 × 5 matrix of characters.

With the character matrix, we can refer to an individual element, that is a character, or a separated row, that is one of the strings:

>> wordmat(2,4)

ans =

d

>> wordmat(1,:)

ans =

Hello

As rows within a matrix should always be of similar length, the shorter strings should be padded with blanks so that all the strings have similar length, or else an error will occur.

>> greetmat = ['Hello'; 'Goodbye']

??? Error using ==> vertcat

The dimensions of CAT arguments are not consistent.

>> greetmat = ['Hello  '; 'Goodbye']

greetmat =

Hello

Goodbye

>> size(greetmat)

ans =

2    7