Write a function that will receive a character and a positive integer n. It will create and return a cell array with strings of increasing lengths, from 1 to the integer n. It will build the strings with successive characters

Write a function buildstr that will receive a character and a positive integer n. It will create and return a cell array with strings of increasing lengths, from 1 to the integer n. It will build the strings with successive characters in the ASCII encoding. >> buildstr('a',4) ans = 'a' 'ab' 'abc' 'abcd'

[Stephen23]

@Raman Sah: what have you tried so far?

Answer 1

[Eeshan Mitra]

You could use the MATLAB functions "double" and "char" for this purpose.

Assuming you have already gotten the function to read the inputs, lets say buildstr('a',3), then for the character 'a':

>> double('a')

ans =

      97

would yield the ASCII code for the character. You can write your logic and subsequently use the function "char" to convert an ASCII code back to a character. For example:

>> char(double('b') + 1)

ans =

      'c'

Of course in your case, you will need to compensate for edge-cases, like what would you expect when you enter:

 buildstr('y',5)

Answer 2

[Akira Agata]

The function becomes like this. Please note that the following sample script is very basic one. So, some exception handling process should be added for practical use.

function output = buildstr(str, num)
list = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
idx = strfind(list,str);
output = arrayfun(@(x) list(idx:idx+x-1), [1:num],'UniformOutput',false);
end

[Stephen23]

Simpler, and without the risk of missing characters:

list = 'a':'z';

Also note that the square brackets are not required, and are highlighted as such by the MATLAB editor:

[Raman Sah]

Thanks for the solution. Can we do this without using the arrayfun function?

[Stephen23]

@Raman Sah: of course you can do this without arrayfun. Anything that can be done with arrayfun or cellfun can also be done with a loop.

[Akira Agata]

Hi Stephen-san,

Thank you for brushing up my post! :-)