Dealing with string values

Hi, all. I am dealing with a large amount of data with three columns, id, x, y.

While the ids are numeric, they need to be treated as text, for example some are 094567 and I cannot have MatLab stripping the leading 0 and making it 94567, which seems to happen with importdata(_____,'\t')

Is there a command that will treat these more appropriately?

Thanks,

-Clay

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Here's one way:

clc;
numRows = 10;
m = randi(999999, numRows, 1) % Sample data
charm = sprintf('%6.6d', m) % Convert to 1-D character array.
charm = reshape(charm, [6, numRows]) % Back to 2D
charm = charm'

[Clayton]

Interesting work-around, Image Analyst. Thanks for responding, but I don't think that it work for my needs. That turns the id into an mxn matrix instead of values in 1 column. Ideally I want to keep the id value as is because I need it to use unique(id) and later the 'find' function to extract values.

[Image Analyst]

You can't have a leading zero and have it be a numerical class like double or integer. It must be character/string. And thus must be more than one column. Why do you want the numbers to be treated as 6 digits with leading zeros? Maybe they don't really need that if you just adapt whatever code is consuming the array.

[Clayton]

Thanks for the heads up, Image Analyst.

You are right that I don't need the leading zero. My code works just fine for the analytical part. It is just that I am giving these analyses to a buddy. He needs that leading zero to be copacetic with his database, so I am trying to accommodate his needs.

[Image Analyst]

Then it will have to be strings. I don't know of any way, like your buddy apparently does, to deal with leading zeros if they're pure numbers stored in a computer like in the usual IEEE format.

Answer 2

[Clayton]

Thanks, all, for the input. It looks like I'll have to input in, analyze the data as is, and then monkey with the format upon export to fit my friends database needs.

Again. Thanks for taking the time to respond.