MATLAB: How to get a charachter vector from a cell array

Question

I used to have a charachter vector like:

 bound = ['c', 'f', 'f', 'f'];

And I got:

 bound(1) = 'c'
 bound(2) = 'f'

but then I needed to change it and have right now:

 bound = ['ctb', 'f', 'f', 'f'];

but if I want to acces bound(1) I get just:

 bound(1) = 'c'

But I need:

 bound(1) = 'ctb'

So I thought i can use cells instead of char so i changed my code:

 bound = {'ctb', 'f', 'f', 'f'};

And I get also

 bound(1) = 'ctb'

But this is no more a character vector and I can't use it with mkdir to create folders. If you convert

 char(bound)

you get an character array instead of a character vector. Also

 strcat(bound)

remains a cell array. So how can I use mkdir with cell arrays or convert cell arrays to character vectors?

Just for clarification I use it late like this where numa, tnm, lxnum, npnum, stiffnum are integers and method is also a character vector:

 nameap = [num2str(numa),'-',num2str(tnm), ...
    '-',num2str(lxnum),'-',num2str(npnum), ...
    '-',num2str(stiffnum),'-',strcat(bound),'-',method];   %Appendix of folders and files
 simfol = ['sim-',nameap];    %simulation folder name
 mkdir(char(simfol));  %Create folder for the simulation

Ans I use R2016b.

Answer 1

bound = {'ctb', 'f', 'f', 'f'};
bound(1)       %  {'ctb'}, cell
bound{1}       %  'ctb', char
bound{1}(1)    %  'c', char