How can I create a string vector?

Given a vector containing a certain number of elements, for example vector=[2,4,3], I have to create a vector containing in each row (or column) the name of the corresponding planet in the solar system. In the case of the previous vector, the result should be PlanetName=['Venus';'Mars';'Earth']. Can you suggest me a method to create such a vector? thank you.

Answer 1

[Jan]

There are no "string vectors" in Matlab, but you need a "cell string":

Planets = {'Mercury', 'Venus', 'Earth', 'Mars', 'Jupiter', 'Saturn', 'Uranus', 'Neptune'}
Index   = [2, 4, 3];
Chosen  = Planets(Index)

See the "Getting Started" chapters of the documentation, because such a powerful tool as Matlab demands for learning the basics from the documentation.

EDITED: And when you really have a good reason not to use a cell string, but a char-matrix:

Chosen = char(Planets(Index))

Now the strings are padded with zeros. But it is less useful to work with char matrices. Prefer cell strings whenever it is possible.

[Andre Ged]

Sorry, I forgot to specify that the output has to be of this type: char, instead of cell.

[Jan]

This is not possible in Matlab, because the strings have a different number of characters. The thing, which is near to a "string vector" is a CHAR-matrix, but then you have to pad teh shorter names with zeros. See EDITED.

[Andre Ged]

Thank you

[Walter Roberson]

Actually the padding is with blanks when you use char() on a cell array of strings.

[Jan]

@Walter: I still try to ignore, that Matlab pads CHAR matrices with blanks, because zeros are less intrusive.

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

You can use cell arrays, for example:

planet={'planet1' 'planet2' 'planet3'  'planet4'}
vector=[2,4,3]
our=planet(vector)