strcat including space (i.e, ' ')

I have to concatenate words, including spaces

Ex. a='word1'; b='word2';c=strcat(a,' ',b);

I need 'word1 word2', however, the value on c is 'word1word2'

Can you help me?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

To include spaces when concatenating character vectors, use square brackets.

a = 'word1';
b = 'word2';
c = [a ' ' b]

The “ strcat ” function ignores trailing whitespace characters in character vectors. However, “strcat” preserves them in cell arrays of character vectors or string arrays.

a = {'word1'};
b = {'word2'};
c = strcat(a,{' '},b)

You also can use the “plus” operator to combine strings. Starting in R2017a, use double quotes to create strings. For more information on strings, see the “ string ” data type.

a = "word1";
b = "word2";
c = a + " " + b

[Paulo Silva]

Walter I'm sorry but this time I have to disagree with your answer, you said strcat({'word1'},{' '},{'word2'}) but that doesn't work properly for the question and example, that's working with cells (input and output) and the user just wants strings.

[Walter Roberson]

So? The user also wanted variables instead of constants. I illustrated the principle and the user can adapt from there, such as using

c = char(strcat(a,{' '},b));

[Jan]

@CELL/STRCAT is a not efficiently implemented M-function. It is easy to improve it and remove the strange deleting of marinal spaces. This behaviour is kept from the Matlab 4 times, before CELL-strings allowed to create a container for strings of different lengths.

[Paulo Silva]

variables, constants, strings and cells

Too many assumptions for such small question but it's all ok

[Captain Karnage]

FYI for anyone else reading, I had a cell array of strings and I wanted to concatenate the same string (with a space in it) to each of the strings in the cell array (no spaces in these strings). The square bracket (first) method of course doesn't work, neither does the "plus" operator (third/last) method for that. However, the "strcat" using a single cell array with a space (2nd/middle above) method does work.

To specifically show an example:

a = 'Addme';
b = { 'to', 'each', 'one', 'of', 'these', 'words', 'with', 'a', 'space'};
c = strcat(a,{' '},b)

c = 1×9 cell array
    {'Addme to'}    {'Addme each'}    {'Addme one'}    {'Addme of'}    {'Addme these'}    {'Addme words'}    {'Addme with'}    {'Addme a'}    {'Addme space'}

[Walter Roberson]

a = 'Addme';
b = { 'to', 'each', 'one', 'of', 'these', 'words', 'with', 'a', 'space'};

strjoin([a, b])

ans = 'Addme to each one of these words with a space'

a + " " + b

ans = 1×9 string array
    "Addme to"    "Addme each"    "Addme one"    "Addme of"    "Addme these"    "Addme words"    "Addme with"    "Addme a"    "Addme space"

Answer 2

[Paulo Silva]

c=[a ' ' b]

strcat ignores trailing ASCII white space characters and omits all such characters from the output. White space characters in ASCII are space, newline, carriage return, tab, vertical tab, or form-feed characters, all of which return a true response from the MATLAB isspace function. Use the concatenation syntax [s1 s2 s3 ...] to preserve trailing spaces. strcat does not ignore inputs that are cell arrays of strings.

Reference

[Daniel Foose]

This is better than the accepted answer because it keeps the type the same. The accepted answer returns a cell with a string in it (which is different from a string). This answer returns a string.

[Walter Roberson]

The accepted answer returns a cell with a character vector in it. Strings did not exist in R2011a. If strings were being used then you would use a different approach:

>> a = "word1"; b = "word2"; a + " "  + b
ans = 
    "word1 word2"

This requires R2017a or later. For R2016b,

>> a = string('word1'); b = string('word2'); a + ' ' + b

and before R2016b strings did not exist.

Answer 3

[Jy·Li]

c=strcat(a,32,b); % the unicode value of ' ' is 32

Answer 4

[Usman Nawaz]

use double quotes instead of single quotes, worked for me.

[Walter Roberson]

That can be useful, but the output would be a string() object instead of a character vector. string() objects can be useful, but they need slightly different handling than character vectors.

string() objects became available in R2016b; using double-quotes to indicate string objects became available in R2017a.

Answer 5

[R P]

Thank you, Walter

[Paulo Silva]

Please always test the answers provided before accepting them, Walter answer isn't correct (this time).

[Walter Roberson]

>> strcat({'word1'},{' '},{'word2'})

ans =

'word1 word2'

You can dereference this or cell2mat it if you want the string itself as output.

[Jan]

@Walter: CELL2MAT is not efficient here. S{1} is nicer.