With ischar usage - I get two different answers

Hello, I found out that ischar gives two different answers as follows:

ischar("a")

ans =

logical

0

While, with this format, it gives the oppositve answer. Why is that? Thanks

chr = 'a'

chr =

'a'

tf = ischar(chr)

tf =

  logical

   1

Answer 1

[Aquatris]

"a" is a string not a char. You use double quotes for strings single quote for char.

isstring("a")

ans = logical
   1

ischar("a")

ans = logical
   0

isstring('a')

ans = logical
   0

ischar('a')

ans = logical
   1

Answer 2

[Dyuman Joshi]

"Why is that?"

Because a character array (char) and a string array (string) are different. They are both different data types for text data in MATLAB.

You can see the class of both the variables defined below in the output from whos (which can also be found via class) -

y1 = "a";

y2 = 'a';

whos

  Name        Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes

  cmdout      1x33               66  char                
  y1          1x1               150  string              
  y2          1x1                 2  char                

%y1 is a string array
isstring(y1)

ans = logical
   1

%not char array
ischar(y1)

ans = logical
   0

%y2 is a char array
ischar(y2)

ans = logical
   1

%not a string array
isstring(y2)

ans = logical
   0

For more information -

https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/represent-text-with-character-and-string-arrays.html

https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/update-your-code-to-accept-strings.html#mw_7f89d759-1649-4135-bb88-d7ae4dd6f6e4