Why is MATLAB not recognizing my variables in my switch block?

elseif typeRec == 3 %Option if the user wants regional options to choose from
            fprintf('For regions we have:\n')
            fprintf('1. American\n2. Italian\n3. Mexican\n4. Israeli\n')
            region = input('Which one would you like to review? ', 's');
            while isempty(region)
                region = input('Which one would you like to review? ', 's');
            end
            switch region 
                case 1
                    regionc = 'American';
                case 2
                    regionc = 'Italian';
                case 3
                    regionc = 'Mexican';
                case 4
                    regionc = 'Israeli';
            end
            for k=1:size(recipe,1) 
                if strcmp(recipe{k,6},regionc)
                    fprintf('%s\n', cell2mat(recipe(k,1)))
                end
            end

I'm not entirely sure what happened here. I have an Excel file with various recipes, and I am trying to print them. The switch block worked before, but the error 'Unrecognized function or variable 'regionc' ' pops up. Any help would be appreicated !

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

First, you probably want to have an otherwise block in your switch / case to handle the case where a user enters something other than 1, 2, 3, or 4.

Second, even if your user enters 1, 2, 3, or 4 your case statements will not be satisfied. You called input with the 's' option, meaning if you typed 1 at the input prompt the variable region will be the char array '1' which is not the same as the double array 1.

'1' == 1 % false

ans = logical
   0

So change your case statements to check for the characters or change your input statement so it returns double values (1, 2) instead of char values ('1', '2').

region = '2';
switch region
    case 1
        disp('Region 1')
    case '1'
        disp('Region ''1''')
    case 2
        disp('Region 2')
    case '2'
        disp('Region ''2''')
end

Region '2'

[Kamryn Hall]

Ah thank you. A while ago I changed the options to numbers instead of string, so I forgot to take out the 's' in the input statement. I appreciate you pointing that out!