Separating numbers and letters

I have a list of coordinates in a column, ex. ‘43.7N’ and I want the column to just be the numerical value, for example ‘43.7’. How can I eliminate the letter at the end?

[Turlough Hughes]

Can you attach the list as a .mat file so we can see how the data is structured?

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

One approach —

Coords = cell2mat(compose('%.1fN',rand(1,5)*100).')             % Create Column

Coords = 5×5 char array
    '71.0N'
    '75.8N'
    '70.1N'
    '63.5N'
    '82.8N'

ReadNrs = cell2mat(textscan(Coords.','%fN'))                    % Read Column

ReadNrs = 5×1

71.0000 75.8000 70.1000 63.5000 82.8000

whos Coords ReadNrs                                                 % Check Variables

  Name         Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes

  Coords       5x5                50  char                
  ReadNrs      5x1                40  double              

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