Retrieve App Designer textarea content along with the newline characters

Matlab version: 2019b

In Appdesigner, I'm populating a text-area named Status_TxtArea with a single string containing newline breaks as in the example shown below:

txtmsg = sprintf("Matlab version: %s\Something else: %s\nAnother thing: %s", version, variable-1, variable-2);

app.Status_TxtArea.Value = txtmsg

I would like to later retrieve this context from the textarea INCLUDING THE NEWLINE breaks for sending an email. For example:

email_body = app.Status_TxtArea.Value

The problem is that the contents are coming out 'squashed' into a single line without the linebreaks and it looks awful. Is there any easy way to accomplish this? I could put unique delimiters at the end of each line and split them up, but was hoping that wouldn't be necessary. TIA

[Adam Danz]

> The problem is that the contents are coming out 'squashed' into a single line without the linebreaks and it looks awful.

That's not what I see.

First, your example is missing the first "n" in "Matlab version: %s\Something". If you add the n, I see the follwoing (R2022b)

txtmsg = sprintf("Matlab version: %s\nSomething else: %s\nAnother thing: %s", '1.0', '12', '23');
app.Status_TxtArea = uitextarea(uifigure());
app.Status_TxtArea.Value = txtmsg;

app.Status_TxtArea.Value =

ans =

3×1 cell array

{'Matlab version: 1.0'}

{'Something else: 12' }

{'Another thing: 23' }

which, as @Voss explains, is the expected results when using line breaks.

To combine that back into a character vector, you can use,

str = strjoin(app.Status_TxtArea.Value',newline)

str =

'Matlab version: 1.0

Something else: 12

Another thing: 23'

Answer 1

[Voss]

The multi-line text is stored as a cell array of character vectors in the textarea's Value, so to present it with newlines, you can sprintf it with a newline after each element of the cell array:

email_body = sprintf('%s\n',app.Status_TxtArea.Value{:});

Note that this gives you an extra newline at the end compared to your ogininal textmsg. If that's a problem, you can remove it with strtrim:

email_body = strtrim(sprintf('%s\n',app.Status_TxtArea.Value{:}));

Or use strjoin instead of sprintf:

email_body = strjoin(app.Status_TxtArea.Value,newline());

Tested in R2017b and R2022a.

[Prabhakar Vallury]

Ah, this is perfect. I wasn't aware of the strjoin function, was just using string(app.Status_TxtArea.Value) and that was the problem. Thanks for your brilliance!