Difference between ' (single quote) vs " (double quote)?

When used in an fprintf or disp function, what is the difference between using only ' (single quote) vs using " (double quote)? Does fprintf and disp make a difference also regarding when using ' or " ? Thank you.

[KALYAN ACHARJYA]

Have you checked here?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/characters-and-strings.html

In a nutshell:

• single quotes define a character vector with size 1xN, where N is the number of characters between the quotes.
• double quotes define a string array with size 1x1 (i.e. scalar, regardless of how many characters it has). You can think of string arrays as a kind of container for character vectors.

String arrays have some advantages, such as it is possible to have text data with exactly the same dimensions as corresponding numeric data, and there also exist many overloaded operations which perform useful implcit operations on strings. However they also require more memory, can be slower than using character vectors, and are not supported on MATLAB versions prior to R2016b.

"Does fprintf and disp make a difference also regarding when using ' or ""

In many situations where a character vector can be used a string scalar is also supported: read the online documentation for the specific functions to know what inputs it accepts. Providing a string/character vector can make a difference: for example, sprintf will return an output of the same class as its formatSpec input argument.

[Gabriela Matczuk]

Having just had a blackboard based version of a matlab assignment continualy throw me errors that strContainer2 has to be of data type char, I greatly thank you for the clarification and help

[Pete Marsh]

I get the difference between the char vector and a string array. What is the difference between the string array and a cell array?

Thanks

[Stephen23]

"What is the difference between the string array and a cell array?"

Well, they are both kinds of container arrays, but the similarities basically end there.

A cell array is a totally universal container that can hold any kind of array (even other cell arrays), whereas a string array specifically contains character vectors and nothing else. Because of this the string array has a bunch of methods and overloaded functions that offer convenient string manipulation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/create-string-arrays.html

More discussions on this topic:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/388631-returning-string-array-from-mex#answer_310262

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/361783-what-are-the-internal-differences-between-matlab-strings-and-character-arrays

https://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2016/09/15/introducing-string-arrays/