MATLAB: How to replace a segment of a string with another of different size

MATLABstring length errorstringstag replacement

I have a long string with a tag appearing a couple times in it (the tag is a specific set of characters) and I need to replace that tag with another string that has a different length than the tag. I am able to use strfind to find the indeces of the tags and replace them with a "replacement" variable when the replacement is the same size as the tag, but it gives me an error when the tag is smaller or bigger. I was wondering if there is a way of adding or taking away an element from the original string to then make the assignment I was doing without the string size problems. (The tag I have is a string with 1 less character compared to the replacement.)

Best Answer

Well, I was able to do it for my case. This code may be helpful if anyone needs to do something similar. What it does is it adds a space after each tag that is found on the string.

if length(isspace(tag)) ~= length(isspace(replacement))
    for i = [1:size(FinalString,1)]
        index = strfind(lower(FinalString{i}),lower(tag));
        for j = [1:length(index)]
            index = strfind(lower(FinalString{i}),lower(tag));
            temp1 = FinalString{i}(1:index(j)+length(isspace(tag))-1);
            temp2 = FinalString{i}((index(j)+length(isspace(tag))):end);
            temp1 = temp1+" ";
            FinalString{i} = char(strcat(temp1,temp2));
        end
    end
end

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It creates a string (character array) containing just a single space character.

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To remove leading and trailing spaces from the string, you can use the DEBLANK function:

str = '   Hello, World!   '
str = deblank(str)  %remove trailing spaces
str_flipped = str(end:-1:1)  %flip the string
str_flipped = deblank(str_flipped)  %remove trailing spaces of the flipped string
str = str_flipped(end:-1:1)  %flip the string back

The resulting string does not contain any leading or trailing spaces:

str
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To remove leading spaces from the string, you can also use the STRTOK function, which finds the first token in the string. (A token is the first set of characters that is encountered before a delimiter. In the following example, it is white space.) Leading delimiters are ignored. For example:

str = '   Hello   '
str_new = strtok(str)

The first token of the string 'str' without any leading spaces is found:

str_new
 str_new = 'Hello'

If you have a string containing more than one token and want to remove leading spaces from the string, you can use STRTOK in the following format:

 [token,rem] = strtok(str)

where 'str' is the input string, 'token' is the first token, and 'rem' is the remainder. Then combine the outputs 'token' and 'rem'.

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str = '   Hello, World!'
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For more information on these functions, type 'help function_name' at the MATLAB command prompt. If you have installed the documentation, type 'doc function_name' to see the documentation for these functions. If you do not have the documentation installed, you can find it here:

http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/matlab.shtml

Simply type the function name in the search box.

Best Answer

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