foreach loop with strings in Matlab

Question

I want to create a loop that will iterate over several strings, but unable to do so in Matlab.

What works is:

for i=1:3
  if (i==1)
    b=\'cow\';
  else         


        

Answer 1

Your problems are probably caused by the way MATLAB handles strings. MATLAB strings are just arrays of characters. When you call ['cow','dog','cat'], you are forming 'cowdogcat' because [] concatenates arrays without any nesting. If you want nesting behaviour you can use cell arrays which are built using {}. for iterates over the columns of its right hand side. This means you can use the idiom you mentioned above; Oli provided a solution already. This idiom is also a good way to showcase the difference between normal and cell arrays.

%Cell array providing the correct solution
for word = {'cow','dog','cat'}
    disp(word{1}) %word is bound to a 1x1 cell array. This extracts its contents.
end

cow
dog
cat


%Normal array providing weirdness
for word = ['cow','dog','cat'] %Same as word = 'cowdogcat'
    disp(word) %No need to extract content
end

c
o
w
d
o
g
c
a
t

Answer 2

Sure! Use cell arrays for keeping strings (in normal arrays, strings are considered by character, which could work if all strings have the same length, but will bork otherwise).

opts={'cow','dog','cat'}
for i=1:length(opts)
    disp(opts{i})
end

Answer 3

Or you can do:

for i={'cow','dog','cat'}
   disp(i{1})
end

Result:

cow
dog
cat