MATLAB: How to convert all the cell in a columns from char to string

charstringstable

I have a table that contains char columns and double columns. I want to keep the same format but convert all the char into string to do some operation after.
'ABc' 'XYZ'
To : "ABC" "XYZ"

Best Answer

Hum! it's not actually that easy as you can't use the syntax yourtable(:, somecolumns) to change the type of the column from cell array to string.
Option 1: use . indexing over the char columns
for columnname = yourcharcolumnnames  %where yourcharcolumnnames is a cell array of the char column names
   yourtable.(columnname{1}) = string(yourtable.(columnname{1}));
end
Option 2: create an auxiliary function for varfun that can take any column type
function column = convertcolumn(column)
   if iscell(column) && ~isempty(column) && ischar(column)
      column = string(column);
   end
end
which you use with varfun:
newtable = varfun(@convertcolumn, yourtable);
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