New lines in matlab, figure legends and elsewhere

Alec Jacobson

November 16, 2011

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I tried naively to use \n in a matlab string hoping that it would come out as the newline character:

a = 'first\nsecond'

But you just get literally the 2 characters, \ and n in your string.

a =

first\nsecond

You code filter your string through sprintf:

b = sprintf('first\nsecond')

which gives you the newline:

b =

first
second

But this would cause problems if your string happened to contain any of the other sprintf symbols, like %, resulting in missing characters or errors:

sprintf('percentage\n90%')

Puts in the newline but removes the % sign:

ans =

percentage
90

Instead, it's best to use the character code for the new line directly:

c = ['first' char(10) 'second'];

Concatenating strings in matlab is clunky but the newline shows up correctly without any side effects:

c =

first
second

You could easily make a simple replacement function that finds any \n sequences and replaces them with char(10)s with the following:

nl = @(s) strrep(s,'\n',char(10));

Then use your new function nl on your original string with \n to get the newline without worrying about concatenating:

d = nl('first\nsecond');

producing

d =

first
second