How can I create a battleship game board with a variable size as a char array so that I can edit certain elements of it?

So I have the user input the size of the board they want to play on and I figured out how to do it using for loops and fprintf statements, but I need what this code produces but in an array of type char, can anyone help me out? I need a board that will look exactly like the one that my code produces below, but as a char array.

if true
  %Create the visible board
  %for loop creating first row of the board
  fprintf ('\n- ')
  for i = 1:Size
      fprintf (' %d ', i);
  end
  fprintf ('\n')
  %for loop creating the rest of the rows of the board
  for j = 1:Size
      fprintf ('%d', j)
      for j = 1:Size
          fprintf ('  .')
      end
      fprintf ('\n')
  end
end

[Walter Roberson]

duplicates http://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/258039-how-can-i-create-a-battleship-game-board-with-a-variable-size-as-a-char-array-so-that-i-can-edit-cer