Concatenating two tables with different array lengths in a variable of type 'char'

Hi,

I have 2 tables x and y. x and y are tables with same variable names and same data types. There is a variable called 'Filename' in both, which is a char variable which may or may not be of the same length. I would like to concatenate them vertically and I try

y = [y ; x]; 

It works fine when the length of 'Fiilename' is the same in x and y but if not, I get an error message:

Could not concatenate the table variable 'Filename' using VERTCAT.

Caused by:

Error using vertcat

Dimensions of arrays being concatenated are not consistent.

A summary of both the tables gives:

summary (x)

Variables:

Filename: 1×22 char

summary (y)

Variables:

Filename: 1×23 char

I have not shown the results of other variables because it gets lengthy here and they are all the same, differing only in some numeric values.

Also it makes me wonder if it's not possible to have strings of different length in a Table variable in different rows as I feel it would be a very common need.

I think I must be missing something very silly and easy but can't seem to find it.

How do I overcome this? Thank you!

Answer 1

[dpb]

"it makes me wonder if it's not possible to have strings of different length in a Table variable in different rows"

Just like a a character array, no, a table variable must be a regular array which means character string data must be the same length.

But, you can do one of two things, use cellstr() to create the variable in the table as cell strings or the new(ish) strings class.

x.Filename=string(x.Filename);
y.Filename=string(y.Filename);
x=[x;y];

[Chandramouli Santhanam]

Thanks a lot! I understood about handling text in Table variables and the difference between a 'Character' and a "String" :)