strcat two char arrays, how to remove the space?

I have two char arrays a and b, say

a is a 5*14 char

var =

NKY 08/12/11 C
NKY 08/12/11 C
NKY 08/12/11 C
NKY 08/12/11 C
NKY 08/12/11 C

b is a 5*5 char

val =

 5900
 5905
 5910
 5915
 5920

If I do strcat(a,b) or [a,b], it gives me

val =

NKY 08/12/11 C 5900
NKY 08/12/11 C 5905
NKY 08/12/11 C 5910
NKY 08/12/11 C 5915
NKY 08/12/11 C 5920

but I need

val =

NKY 08/12/11 C5900
NKY 08/12/11 C5905
NKY 08/12/11 C5910
NKY 08/12/11 C5915
NKY 08/12/11 C5920

Could anyone tell me how to do that? Very appreciated!

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

val(:,15) = [];  %just delete that column

[Zoe Zhang]

Thanks! So there is like no one-step solution by just manipulating strcat, right?

[Sean de Wolski]

the problem is that your "5x5" char, the second input to strcat, is actually a 6x5 char, I believe. It has nothing to do with strcat - it's not adding the zero.

[Zoe Zhang]

Thanks again.

Btw, my b is from num2str of a vector of number.

Answer 2

[Fangjun Jiang]

You either have trailing white space at the end of "a" or leading whitespace at the begining of "b". check out the following functions.

help strtrim
help deblank

[Zoe Zhang]

Thank you!

strcat(strtrim(a),strtrim(b));

and strcat(deblank(a),deblank(b));

both gives me the 'NKY 08/12/11 C 5900'

actually my a is coming from repmat, b is from num2str

[Fangjun Jiang]

Well, look at your b, it has 4 letters per row but it says 5x5 char so it got be the leading whitespace.

>> b=[' 5900';' 5905';' 5910';' 5915';' 5920'];

>> c=strtrim(b);

>> whos

Name Size Bytes Class Attributes

b 5x5 50 char

c 5x4 40 char

[Zoe Zhang]

IC, thanks :)

[Fangjun Jiang]

The reason might be that you only showed a small portion of your data.

a=[5900:5:5920,15900];

b=num2str(a')

b =

5900

5905

5910

5915

5920

15900

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

strcat('NKY 08/12/11 C', strtrim(cellstr(b)))

Note that this allows you to skip the repmat of the constant string.

Note also that this will return a cell array of strings; you can use char() to convert back to a char array.

[Zoe Zhang]

Neat and efficient. And the space problem disappear. Thanks a lot!