How to make this long if-else chain compact?

I am trying to generate a markov chain based text generator of 2nd order. As a first step, I did a zeroth order Markov chain.But it has a long if-else chain. How to make this compact. When I am proceeding to 1st and 2nd order markov chains, I don't know how to manage this. And the code is given below:

%Zeroth order markov chain generator from a training data of a text file
close all;
clear ; 
clc; % close all figure windows, clear variables, clear screen

%read text file and split it into characters in a cell
text = fileread('pp'); 
[~, text] = strsplit(text,'.','DelimiterType', ...
'RegularExpression','CollapseDelimiters',false);%split the string

%one big cell is returned, unwrap it and convert to lowercase
text = lower(text);

%delete white spaces (and keep a single space where continuous
%double spaces come)
ws = cellfun(@(x)any(x),isstrprop(text,'wspace'));
spIndex = strfind(ws, ones(1,2));
text(spIndex)=[];

%remove punctuation and any non-alpha characters
punc = cellfun(@(x)any(x),isstrprop(text,'punct'));
pIndex = strfind(punc, ones(1,1));
text(pIndex)=[];
%replace char(10) with space
text=strrep(text, char(10), ' ');

% for easy processing I am converting the alphabets to 
% numbers (cell to number array) like a-z as 1-26 and space as 27.

seq=cell2mat(text);
seq=double(seq)-(double('a')-1);%alphabets a-z has ids 1-26
seq(seq == -64)=27;%space symbol has id 27

%find distribution of the sequence
xRange = 1:27;              %# Range of integers to compute a probability for
N = hist(seq,xRange);       %# Bin the data
dist=N./numel(seq);
cdist=cumsum(dist);

%generate sequence according to distribution
fileID = fopen('chain','w');
for k=1:numel(seq)
    p=rand;
    if ((p >= 0) && (p <= cdist(1)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','1');
    elseif ((p > cdist(1)) && (p <=cdist(2)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','2');
    elseif ((p > cdist(2)) && (p <=cdist(3)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','3');
    elseif ((p > cdist(3)) && (p <=cdist(4)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','4');
    elseif ((p > cdist(4)) && (p <=cdist(5)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','5');
    elseif ((p > cdist(5)) && (p <=cdist(6)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','6');
    elseif ((p > cdist(6)) && (p <=cdist(7)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','7');
    elseif ((p > cdist(7)) && (p <=cdist(8)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','8');
    elseif ((p > cdist(8)) && (p <=cdist(9)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','9');
    elseif ((p > cdist(9)) && (p <=cdist(10)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','10');     
    elseif ((p > cdist(10)) && (p <=cdist(11)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','11');
    elseif ((p > cdist(11)) && (p <=cdist(12)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','12');
    elseif ((p > cdist(12)) && (p <=cdist(13)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','13');
    elseif ((p > cdist(13)) && (p <=cdist(14)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','14'); 
    elseif ((p > cdist(14)) && (p <=cdist(15)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','15');
    elseif ((p > cdist(15)) && (p <=cdist(16)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','16');
    elseif ((p > cdist(16)) && (p <=cdist(17)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','17');
    elseif ((p > cdist(17)) && (p <=cdist(18)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','18');
    elseif ((p > cdist(18)) && (p <=cdist(19)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','19');
    elseif ((p > cdist(19)) && (p <=cdist(20)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','20');
    elseif ((p > cdist(20)) && (p <=cdist(21)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','21');
    elseif ((p > cdist(21)) && (p <=cdist(22)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','22');
    elseif ((p > cdist(22)) && (p <=cdist(23)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','23');
    elseif ((p > cdist(23)) && (p <=cdist(24)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','24');
    elseif ((p > cdist(24)) && (p <=cdist(25)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','25'); 
    elseif ((p > cdist(25)) && (p <=cdist(26)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','26');
    elseif ((p > cdist(26)) && (p <=cdist(27)))
        fprintf(fileID,'%s\n','27');    
    end
end

fclose(fileID); 
fileID = fopen('chain','r');
gen_text = fscanf(fileID,'%f');%zeroth order markov generated text
fclose(fileID);

gen_text=gen_text+96;
gen_text(gen_text==(27+96))=32;
gen_text=gen_text';
gen_text=char(gen_text);

fileID = fopen('pp_zero_mc','w');
fprintf(fileID, '%s',gen_text);
fclose(fileID);

Otherwise I have to look for different method of generating sequence. Please help.

Answer 1

[dpb]

Several alternatives -- probably bestest is table lookup

state=floor(interp1(cdist,[1:nStates],p));

Can get there also with

doc histc  % optional second output

Either of these can be vectorized and extended to higher dimensions as well.

[DEVANAND]

Is there any possiblity for me to extend this to second order markov chains. Please see this link for my question. I diid the first order one.

[dpb]

As I noted, either can be extended to higher dimensions. Under

help interp1

one finds in the "See also" section

See also interp1q, interpft, ... interp2, interp3, interpn, ...

[DEVANAND]

Let me see. Thanks for the reply.