MATLAB: Textscan reading file and surrounding text with single quotes

cell arraystringtextscan

I've realized that, in the simple function I'm trying to write, textscan appears to be reading in the text and surrounding it with single quotes. Here's what I mean:
Test file contents: ABCCBDXYZABCZZ
MATLAB commands:
fileID=fopen(FILENAME); str=textscan(fileID,'%s');
The result of this is a 1×1 cell, as expected, however the contents of the cell are: 'ABCCBDXYZABCZZ' instead of ABCCBDXYZABCZZ
This is proving to be an issue because accessing the cell contennts with "string = str{1}" only returns a cell, instead of an actual string- so I can't do any string operations on it. Is this intended behavior?
When I manually create a cell with the following:
cell_test = {'ABCDEF'};
the workspace shows the variable is a 1×1 cell, but the contents of the cell are ABCDEF without the single quotes, so if I do
string_test = cell_test{1}
it sets the actual string to that variable, instead of the string surrounded by single quotes, which is treated as another cell.
I can't find this issue anywhere else- it's possible that I've looked in the wrong place, but all the results are about not accessing the cell contents properly, which I don't believe I'm suffering from.

Best Answer

 >> fileContent = 'ABCD 8 10.2' ;                      % Fake content for the ex.
 >> columns = textscan(fileContent, '%s %d %f') ;
 >> class(columns)
 ans =
 cell
 >> size(columns)
 ans =
     1     3
TEXTSCAN outputs a cell array of columns, as shown above (each cell of its output contain a column of data). When the data type/class of a column allows it, the column is stored as a numeric array; it is stored as a cell array otherwise (e.g. for "strings").
Accessing the content of cell 1 of cell array columns (using {}), we get..
 >> class(columns{1})
 ans =
 cell
So cell 1 of columns is a cell array in itself. Cell 1 of this cell array contains the string 'ABCD' (where single quotes are the delimiter for strings). Note that displaying a string (e.g. with DISP which is implicit) in the command window doesn't display delimiters
 >> class(columns{1}{1})        % Element 1 of column 1.
 ans =
 char
 >> columns{1}{1}
 ans =
 ABCD
Columns 2 and 3 are numeric, so the content of cells 2 and 3 of columns are not cell arrays but numeric arrays:
 >> class(columns{3})                   % Numeric array of doubles.
 ans =
 double
 >> class(columns{3}(1))                % Element 1 is a double.
 ans =
 double
 >> columns{3}(1)
 ans =
   10.2000
Related Question