MATLAB: Conversion from binary to decimal

bin2decbinary

Hello, I am trying to perform binary to decimal conversion somewhere in my code and I get the following error message. can someone please help.
item=bits(i,:));% item is a row gotten from the array named bits
scale=bin2dec('item');
??? Error using ==> bin2dec at 54 Binary string may consist only of characters 0 and 1
Error in ==> QUANTIZATION_BLOCK at 121 scale=bin2dec('item');
Thanks.

Best Answer

First of all, it would be
scale = bin2dec(item); %no quotes!
Secondly, your bit values are probably values of 0 and 1, whereas bin2dec needs values of '0' and '1'
item = char('0' + bits(i,:));