how to simplify multi- if statement

I'm trying to do the following work, given a string of 'ABCDE' etc,

for each letter, it will be assigned with a unique number.

How would I do it without putting 26 if and else if statement in a simple way?

I'm thinking of two matrices. But it may not be on the right track. Can anyone help with this case? Thanx in advance!

[Qian]

sorry for the bad description. I'm saying, the assignments between letters and numbers are given, what I want is to replace letter with numbers in the given way. The only method I was using is the if and else if statement with one-to-one assignment, but with longer string of letters, I don't really like to put 26 statement, is there any quicker way?

Answer 1

[Matt Fig]

STR = char(65:90)
KEY = randi(10000,1,length(STR))

But what are you going to do with these that you would need an IF block for? Are you going to do something like encode a given string?

g_str = upper('Hello')
k_str = KEY(g_str-64)

[Qian]

thanx for that as well, but sorry for my bad description. I'm saying, the assignments between letters and numbers are given, what I want is to replace letter with numbers in the given way. The only method I was using is the if and else if statement with one-to-one assignment, but with longer string of letters, I don't really like to put 26 statement, is there any quicker way?

[Matt Fig]

That is what my second bit of code does..... Just imagine the KEY is the given set of numbers for all the letters in STR. Then to replace the letters in g_str, index into KEY like I did.

[Qian]

Yep, I think I see what u meant now. Thanx!

[Qian]

can I ask one more question, why is it -64?

[Qian]

is it because u used char function?

[Qian]

I think that's still not going to solve my problem fully, since My string is not in alpha beta order, and it's not fully 26 letters.

[Matt Fig]

But the same concept should apply. I subtracted 64 because we need to index starting from 1 and the ascii alphabet starts at 65.

[Jos (10584)]

Using randi, it is not guaranteed that each character in STR is mapped onto a unique value ...

Answer 2

[Rick Rosson]

   aStr = 'ABCDE';
   x = uint8(aStr) - 64;

[Qian]

thanx for that, but the problem is ABCDE are not assigned to patterned numbers, but some random numbers, for instance A=14, B=23, C=1, D=4,E=34 etc.