MATLAB: Is this contradiction happening

Question

prompt = {'Angle (degrees)'};
title = 'Angle';
answer = inputdlg(prompt,title);
alpha = answer{1}
a = degtorad(alpha)
b = degtorad(0)

If you run this program..you can see that a and b values are different but both must be equal to 0. first i thought 'alpha' was reading the answer differently. but even it is 0. even then the value of a is still not 0. can anyone explain y? and how can get the value of a as 0?

Answer 1

Use

 alpha = str2num(answer{1})

instead. answer{1} is a string that needs to be converted first.