Inverse function to genvarname, matlab.lan​g.makeVali​dName(Str,​"Replaceme​ntStyle","​hex")

I need to use the field names of a structure to automatically generate some plot legends. Therefor I would need a function that converts a string containing hexadecimal representations of a character back to the character. Example.

VarName = genvarname("Alpha-Bravo")

VarName % Alpha0x2DBravo

Str = theSearchedFunction(VarName, ...)

Str % Alpha-Bravo

[Stephen23]

There is no general solution to this, e.g. it is impossible to distinguish between these two:

genvarname("-")

ans = "x0x2D"

genvarname("x0x2D")

ans = "x0x2D"

If you can place some restrictions on the characters, then it might be possible.

Answer 1

[Oisín Watkins]

I had this same problem, but in my case the hex string was only ever 2 charaters long, eg: '0x26' or '0x27'.

I made a simple enough function to search out those substrings, split the input string by that deliminator, then convert the deliminator and concatonate the result back in. This also works for strings with multiple hex segments. At the end all remaining characters are concatonated onto the output string.

function [output_str] = getvarname(input_str)
%getvarname undos the conversion performed by genvarname

idx = strfind(input_str, '0x');
str_to_search = input_str;
output_str = "";

for i=1:length(idx)
    deliminator = input_str(idx(i):idx(i)+3);
    str_parts = split(str_to_search, deliminator);
    
    character = char(hex2dec(input_str(idx(i)+2:idx(i)+3)));
    
    output_str = strcat(output_str, str_parts{1}, character);
    
    str_to_search = str_parts{2};
end

output_str = strcat(output_str, input_str(idx(end)+4:end));
end

This is fairly cheap and simple, but it did the trick for me. Hope this helps!