Ascii to number/decimal

Hi, ive read in a number into a file using regexp to find numbers from a string of data

so far i have a variable: s=2.50000

now if i try to manipulate this number for example s*2 i get the following answer:

"ans = 100 92 106 96 96 96 96 96"

im aware that this is ASCII format for the number but i cant work out how to change variable S into a normal number i can manipulate

Answer 1

[Tom]

 str2double(s)

or

 str2num(s)