how to save an array of letters in matlab ?

If for example I have the English alphabet and I want to create an array of each 4 letter for exmaple : if x='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' then each 4 letter in my new word will be : y=afkpuz and this is my code :

clc;
clear all;
close all;

x='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'

array=zeros(1,length(x));

counter=0;

   for i=1:5:length(x)

       counter=counter+1
       num2str(i)

       array(counter)=(x(i))

   end

but for some reason instead of getting an array of letters I get an array of numbers . How do I fix it ?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

"but for some reason instead of getting an array of letters I get an array of numbers"

Yes, because you specified array to be numeric:

array=zeros(1,length(x)); % zeros -> numeric double

and each time you allocate anything to this array MATLAB will try its best to convert it to a double (so the character gets converted to its char value). If you really want a character array, then you need to specify this, e.g.:

array = char(zeros(...));

But using a loop is very inefficient anyway, it is much simpler to use indexing:

>> x = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
>> y = x(1:5:end)
y = afkpuz

[tomer polsky]

thank you very much friend ,you helped me a lot .