Why are strings in a cellarray not interpreted as strings?

I'm sorry, but I'm sure this is a dumb question, so I ask your forgiveness in advance.

I have a cell array of strings. For example,

mystrings={'(2,3)(4,7)(5,9)', '(1,3)(4,9)'};

now I want to pass them, one at a time, to a function that takes a string argument. When I call

myfunction('(2,3)(4,7)(5,9)')

it works fine, but if I call

myfunction(mystrings(1))

it's not working because, aparently, mystrings(1) is not really a string, even though, when I type mystrings(1) on the matlab command line, the output is

'(2,3)(4,7)(5,9)'

Also, when I enter

isstr('(2,3)(4,6)(5,9)')

the answer is 1, but isstr(mystrings(1)) gives 0.

So what am I missing?

Thanks! -William

Answer 1

[Teja Muppirala]

mystrings(1) returns a cell array.

mystrings{1} returns the actual contents of the cell array (in this case a string).

So you should do

myfunction(mystrings{1})

Answer 2

[James Tursa]

mystrings is a cell array, the elements of which are cells. The contents of the cells are strings. The ( ) syntax recovers the cell, the { } syntax (curly braces) recovers what is in the cell. e.g.,

mystrings(1) is a cell that is the first element of mystrings.

mystrings{1} is the contents of the above cell, and is a string.

[William]

Thanks to you both for giving me such quick and helpful answers! -William