Getting some unknown characters like blank squares in my MATLAB files .

I'm currently engaged in a project that necessitates the inclusion of multilingual characters, such as Chinese or French, within my MATLAB code for comments and other purposes.

Previously, I was utilizing MATLAB 2022b without any issues. However, after upgrading to MATLAB 2023a, I've encountered difficulties incorporating these characters.

Whenever I attempt to include Chinese or French characters, I find that blank squares or question marks are rendered within the MATLAB file instead of the intended characters. I suspect that this issue might be attributable to the update.

Could someone kindly offer assistance or guidance on resolving this matter? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Pavan Sahith]

Can I know the encoding being used , changing the encoding will help

[Saaketh Ramachandra Puligadda]

How to know the information about encoding?

Answer 1

[Pavan Sahith]

Hello Ramachandra,

It appears that MATLAB is not identifying French or Chinese characters correctly and question marks or boxes are appearing instead, it could be due to the incorrect encoding being used. To get a better understanding of the current locale settings in MATLAB, you can use the command:

feature('locale') 

Generally, setting the encoding to 'UTF-8' should solve this issue. For that you can try the following steps:

• In MATLAB, Use "Save As" to save the file.
• The saving box that comes up will have a menu that allows you to select the format of the file to save as.
• Make sure that UTF-8 is selected and not "all .m files".

You can also refer to the following link to change the encoding to UTF-8

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_env/how-the-matlab-process-uses-locale-settings.html

Hope the above information helps.

[Saaketh Ramachandra Puligadda]

Thanks for the reply ,the link helped me to change the encoding to UTF-8.

I also checked my current encoding details using "feature('locale')", it wasn't UTF-8 before.

Answer 2

[cui,xingxing]

Hi,@Saaketh Ramachandra Puligadda

Save the file that was displayed correctly in R2022b as a new file, note that the type is "utf-8", and then it should be displayed correctly in later versions.

BTW,MATLAB has used UTF-8 as the default encoding for MATLAB files and file I/O since R2020a.

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[Saaketh Ramachandra Puligadda]

I don't have the MATLAB 2022b on my PC now

[cui,xingxing]

Alternatively, what if you save the file as "utf-8" in R2023a?

Reference:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/482380-how-to-set-the-encoding-of-matlab-m-files-to-be-utf8#answer_627989

[Saaketh Ramachandra Puligadda]

Thanks for the reply , it helped me changing the encoding of my current file to UTF-8 .