MATLAB SWITCH not recognizing string from Excel spread sheet

Hi everyone,

I've been getting input from an Excel file and I want to use a SWITCH expression based on the selections. MATLAB gives the following error: SWITCH expression must be a scalar or string constant. My code looks like this:

a = excelInput;
switch a
    case 'velocity'
        % do something
    case 'time'
        % do something else
end

[Stephen23]

The error message is telling you that the variable a is not a string or scalar numeric, which it needs to be to use with switch. So you need to look at this variable and see what class it is, or what size it is.

The switch statement itself is not the problem, the problem is what a is. So if you want help then you need to actually tell us what a is. You could use whos to do this, and tell us exactly the output.

[Charles Kubeka]

According to the whos function its a cell

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Try

switch a{1}

[Charles Kubeka]

It works. Thanks Walter.