How to insert newline into displayed text in GUI?

I have a text box in my GUIDE-generated GUI in which I want to display the file that I just loaded (and read data from). I want it so that on the top line is just a file name, and on the next line it shows the path. I can't figure out how to insert a newline character into the string that I want to display. Somewhere on a forum site (perhaps this one) I saw someone suggest using the sprintf function like this:

string = sprintf([filename, '\n', pathname]);

set(handles.textbox,'String',string)

This WOULD work if only my filename and pathname did not have all sorts of special characters like underscores and backslashes. I tried escaping them by using the strrep function and replacing all underscores ---> '\_' and likewise any backslash ---> '\\'. Then I tried to do

string = sprintf([filename2, '\n', pathname2]);

where filename2 and pathname2 have been processed with strrep . But it fails to work! I continue to get an error when I try to run the GUI and display the loaded file into the textbox:

Warning: Escape sequence '_' is not valid. See 'help sprintf' for valid escape sequences.

Any suggestions? Why is sprintf still screwing up with the underscore if I escaped it?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

string = sprintf('%s\n%s', filename2, pathname2);
set(handles.text1, 'String', string);

Answer 2

[Jasper van Casteren]

You need to initialize the textbox with a cell of strings. like

   uicontrol(parent,'Style','text','String',{'Ready'}, 'tag', 'btTXT', . . .

then you can add lines by simple

   h = guihandles(hObject)
   h.btTXT.String = [h.btTXT.String; 'START'];
   h.btTXT.String = [h.btTXT.String; sprintf('whatever you like = %d', whatever)];

[Bogdan Dzyubak]

Wow, super neat.

MyBox = uicontrol('style','text','FontSize',20);

set(MyBox,'Units','normalized','Position',[xpos,ypos,xsize,ysize]);

% set(MyBox,'String',['Get good ', ':-)']); % Single line

set(MyBox,'String',{'Get good, ', ':-)'}); % Double line!

Does not appear to be required, but someone else had commented that using set(MyBox,'Max',2) increases number of allowed lines from 1 to 2.