How can i use ' character in a string

Hi

How can i merge two seperate strings into one string, for instance;

I want to create a variable like that :

>> 'materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt' which contains ' character inside.

So i use

A=' ' '; B='materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt'

FD={ A B A};

but it doesnt work

Can u you help me ?

[John D'Errico]

You were close though. First, note that in order to get a single ' character in a string, you needed to use

A = ' ' ' ';

So a QUADRUPLE ' in there. 3 will give an error. The two on the outside make it a string. Then the two on the inside tell MATLAB it is a ' character.

But then when you tried to create

FD={ A B A};

you also needed to use [] to catenate the strings together. {} creates a cell array.

FD = [ A B A];

Anyway, just use what Stephen gave you, as it is the appropriate solution.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

How to create character arrays (including single quotes) is described in the documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/creating-character-arrays.html

To get a literal single quote you just need to double it, e.g.:

>> FD = '''materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt'''
FD = 'materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt'

Or if you want to define a single quote by itself:

>> A = '''' % one single quote by itself
A = '
>> B = 'materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt'
B = materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt
>> FD = [A,B,A] % concatenate
FD = 'materialproperties/uniaxialelement.txt'

[John D'Errico]

Indeed, this is the first trick you should look for in any similar context. If ' is a special character in context of a string, then consider if just repeating that special character will do something useful.