Comparing strings with and without ' '

I have two strings but one is 'Word' stored with the quotes '' in a cell array, whereas another is a string that is just : Word without the ''. When I do a string compare, it fails. Is there a solution to this?

Answer 1

[Sven]

Hi Mini, first I'll make some strings

myStrings = {'''Word''', 'Word'};
>> myStrings{1}
ans =
'Word'
>> myStrings{2}
ans =
Word

Now, I'll do a string compare:

>> strcmp('Word', myStrings)
ans =
     0     1
>> strcmp('''Word''', myStrings)
ans =
     1     0
>> strcmp('Word', strrep(myStrings,'''',''))
ans =
     1     1

Note that they all "work" (ie, they don't error). Also note how I replaced the quote character with the empty string to make the strcmp return true for both versions.

Does this answer your question?

If not, please show us exactly the code to create your two strings and the comparison you are trying to run. Often this is clearer than a sentence describing code.

[Mini]

Hi, unfortunately this did not work for me. I think the problem may be with the data structure.

The first string is stored by reading an excel file, using this code:

[~,~,raw] = xlsread('data.xlsx', 1, 'A2:B25')

The array 'raw' has cells of string data. I want to compare a 1x1 cell that says 'Word' with a 1x11 char string Word. This keeps failing with strcmp although the string is the same. How do I solve this?

[per isakson]

Most likely the string isn't the same. Show something the way I did below.

[Sven]

   'Word' with a 1x11 char string Word

There are only 4 characters in "Word", or 6 in "'Word'".

Maybe use strtrim() on your variables to get rid of spaces?

You'll note that we can only say things like "maybe" because you keep describing variables rather than just giving code that produces the variable.

Answer 2

[per isakson]

I'm guessing

    >> cac={'Word'}
    cac = 
        'Word'
    >> str='Word'
    str =
    Word
    >> strcmp( str, cac )
    ans =
         1
    >>

or less good

    >> all( cac{:}==str )
    ans =
         1