MATLAB: How to change string to number in excel file

Question

Hi,

I have an excel file that contains string (y and n). I read the file using xlsread. Now I want to replace all the y's with 1 and all the n's with 0. How can I do that?

Answer 1

data  = {'y', 'y', 'n', 'y'};
value = nan(size(data));
value(strcmp(data, 'y')) = 1;
value(strcmp(data, 'n')) = 0;