Truncate strings to maximum length

I have an array of strings (new strings, not old character arrays) of varying lengths, and I would like to truncate them to below some maximum length. I thought that extractBefore would be helpful, but it fails for strings shorter than the truncation length.

>> str = ["ab", "cdefg"];

>> extractBefore(str, 3)  % this works fine
ans = 
  1×2 string array
    "ab"    "cd"

>> extractBefore(str, 4)  % this fails
Error using extractBefore
Numeric value exceeds the number of characters in element 1.

This is my current solution:

>> arrayfun(@(s)extractBefore(s, min(4, s.strlength())+1), str)
ans = 
  1×2 string array
    "ab"    "cdef"

However, this is awkward and difficult to read.

Is there no ready-made functionality for doing this?

Answer 1

[Jan]

Omit arrayfun:

str = ["ab", "cdefg"];
extractBefore(str, min(4, str.strlength())+1)

ans = 1×2 string array
    "ab"    "cdef"

If this still looks to clumsy, write your own function:

limitWidth(str, 4)

function s = limitWidth(s, n)
s = extractBefore(s, min(n, s.strlength()) + 1);
end

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

str = ["ab", "cdefg"];
out = regexp(str,'^.{1,4}','match','once')

out = 1×2 string array
    "ab"    "cdef"