Inserting a tab character into a string

I am attempting to insert a space into a string. Here is my code:

t1 = 'Control Chart For ';
t2 = '\t';
t3 = num2str(w);
t4 = ' water flow ';
t5 = '\t';
t6 = num2str(o);
t7 = ' oil flow ';
str = strcat(t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, t6, t7);

This should yield:

 Control Chart For   5 water flow    3 oil flow

however it yields instead:

 Control Chart For\t5 water flow\t3 oil flow

Just adding spaces in the string does not work either and making the string \t instead of '\t' also fails.

Answer 1

[Andrew Newell]

A nicer way of doing it is

      str = sprintf('Control Chart For \t %d water flow \t %d oil flow',w,o)

[Oleg Komarov]

I would go for this approach, it is more readable the way space chars are handled.

[Stephen23]

Using sprintf is also faster than concatenating strings.

Answer 2

[Paulo Silva]

char(9) instead of only one string doesn't seem to work, I also tried, sprintf('\t'), this way works:

t1 = 'Control Chart For ';
t3 = [char(9) num2str(w)];
t4 = ' water flow ';
t6 = [char(9) num2str(o)];
t7 = ' oil flow ';
str = strcat(t1,t3, t4, t6, t7)

[Paulo Silva]

That's why I did this

t3 = [char(9) num2str(w)];

instead of

t2=char(9);

t3 = num2str(w);

[Andrew Newell]

Absolutely. And I like your diplomatic way of saying I'm wrong!

[Walter Roberson]

strcat does not remove whitespace from cell strings.

Answer 3

[the cyclist]

Are you trying to insert a tab character, or just white space? If the latter, you can concatenate with square brackets:

 >> str = [t1, t3, t4, t6, t7]

Then the trailing whitespace in t1, etc, will not be dropped, and you don't need to manually insert the space.

Looks like this syntax works for tab as well:

 >> str = [t1, char(9), t2, t3, t4, t5, t6, t7]

Answer 4

[Aleksandar Mojsic]

This will work:

 str = sprintf([t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, t6, t7])

Answer 5

[fernando bordignon]

You can also use the tab itself, but you need to disable the "insert white spaces" option at the editor preferences. Another way of doing that would be by copy pasting the tab character from another editor.