Difference between using single quotes ('xyz') and double quotes ("xyz") in formatspec

What is the difference between using single quotes ('xyz') and double quotes ("xyz") in formatspec?

Answer 1

[James Tursa]

In MATLAB, single quotes ' ' are used to create char type variables, and double quotes " " are used to create string type variables.

Char type variables are simple rectangular arrays of characters:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/char.html?searchHighlight=char&s_tid=srchtitle

String type variables are OOP objects that have many features that are not available with char type variables, such as creating arrays of varying length strings:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/string.html?searchHighlight=string&s_tid=srchtitle

[Steven Lord]

One difference that's specific to the circumstances of using them in a format specifier of a call to sprintf is that the result will be the same type as the format specifier as stated in the section of the documentation page that describes the str output.

c = sprintf('%d %d %d', 1:3)

c = '1 2 3'

s = sprintf("%d %d %d", 1:3)

s = "1 2 3"

whos c s

  Name      Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes

  c         1x5                10  char                
  s         1x1               150  string