Putting spaces between strings?

I have three different strings and are putting them together in an array. The result is simply the three strings combined. However, I want to put spaces between each string. I tried doing this:

a = 'str1'
b = 'str2'
c = 'str3'

x = [a,'',b,'',c]

but that doesn't do anything so how would I put spaces then?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Your '' is just a null string - no space was between the quotes - so that's why no space was inserted. I really like using sprintf() for building up strings. A way using sprintf:

x = sprintf('%s %s %s', a, b, c);

Note the spaces in between the %s. That will make spaces in the final output string.

[Joe]

I tried that code, but ended up getting an empty array

[Image Analyst]

Joe, you did something wrong. Here, I just copied and pasted my code:

clc;
a = 'str1'
b = 'str2'
c = 'str3'
% sprintf() method:
x = sprintf('%s %s %s', a, b, c)
% Concatenation method:
x = [a, ' ', b, ' ', c]

and now I copy and paste the command window:

a =
str1
b =
str2
c =
str3
x =
str1 str2 str3
x =
str1 str2 str3

You can certainly see that it is not empty. Is your a, b, and c cell arrays, not character strings? What does this say:

>> whos a

[Joe]

Oh I see what was wrong, I got it to work! Thanks for the help!

[M. Saim Riaz]

Hi Image Analyst! I want the spaces between the characters I stored in an array using a for loop.

for j=1:5
      turn(j)='t';
end

It gives this result,

turn =

tttt

How can I insert spaces between these 't's? I tried using this, but it gives error.

for j=1:5
      turn(j)='t ';
end

[Image Analyst]

Saim, I'm not sure why you got 4 t's. I got 5. Anyway to put a space after each t, do this:

for j=1:5
      turn(j*2-1)='t';
      turn(j*2)=' ';
end
turn % Display in command window.

Answer 2

[Luke Perry]

Image Analyst's code is absolutely correct, but to add on, here is how to fix your original code:

a = 'str1';
b = 'str2';
c = 'str3';
x = [a,' ',b,' ',c]

x =
>>'str1 str2 str3'

notice the '' was turned into ' '. That is, a space was added between the single quotes. I use this method often when using messagebox string definition to easily read what the user will see in side the messagebox, but either answer works. I'm not entirely sure which would necessarily be more correct or efficient.