Finding a specific character in a string in Matlab

Question

Suppose I have a string 'johndoe@hotmail.com'. I want to store the string before and after "@" into 2 separate strings. What would be the easiest method of finding the "@" character or other characters in the string?

gnovice · Answer 1 · 2009-09-15T06:36:47.687

17

STRTOK and an index operation should do the trick:

str = 'johndoe@hotmail.com';
[name,address] = strtok(str,'@');
address = address(2:end);

Or the last line could also be:

address(1) = '';

edited Sep 15 '09 at 06:36

answered Sep 15 '09 at 06:05

gnovice

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score 12 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 15 '09 at 06:56

12

You can use strread:

str = 'johndoe@hotmail.com';
[a b] = strread(str, '%s %s', 'delimiter','@')
a = 
    'johndoe'
b = 
    'hotmail.com'

answered Sep 15 '09 at 06:56

Amro

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note: recent versions of MATLAB recommend using `textscan` instead of `strread` – Amro Apr 19 '13 at 06:08

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 15 '09 at 04:51

For "easiest",

>> email = 'johndoe@hotmail.com'
email =
johndoe@hotmail.com
>> email == '@'
ans =
  Columns 1 through 13
     0     0     0     0     0     0     0     1     0     0     0     0     0
  Columns 14 through 19
     0     0     0     0     0     0
>> at = find(email == '@')
at =
     8
>> email(1:at-1)
ans =
johndoe
>> email(at+1:end)
ans =
hotmail.com

It would be slightly more complicated if you were looking for something with more than one character, or you weren't sure if there was exactly one @, and in that case MATLAB has a lot of functions for searching through text, including regular expressions (see doc regexp).

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 15 '09 at 06:44

7

TEXTSCAN works too.

str = 'johndoe@hotmail.com';
parts = textscan(str, '%s %s', 'Delimiter', '@');

returns a cell array where parts{1} is 'johndoe' and parts{2} is 'hotmail.com'.

answered Sep 15 '09 at 06:44

mtrw

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score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 30 '13 at 13:14

5

If this thread isn't completely enumerated by now, may I add another? A handy perl-based MATLAB function:

email = 'johndoe@hotmail.com';
parts = regexp(email,'@', 'split');

parts is a two element cell array similar to mtrw's implementation of textscan. Maybe overkill, but regexp is much more useful when splitting a string by multiple delimiting characters or pattern searching. The only downside is the use of regular expressions which I still haven't mastered after 15 years of coding.

edited Apr 30 '13 at 13:14

Shai

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answered Mar 20 '13 at 20:20

SnakeEyes1482

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+1 strange that no one mentioned regular expressions this whole time :) – Amro Apr 19 '13 at 06:07

score -1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 15 '09 at 05:05

-1

I used strtok and strrep from Matlab instead.

answered Sep 15 '09 at 05:05

stanigator

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-1. The other answers are better here since they provide example code. How did you use `strtok` and `strrep`? Show an example and I'll flip to a +1. – gary Apr 05 '11 at 13:06

score -4 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 15 '12 at 11:48

-4

String email = "johndoe@hotmail.com";

    String a[] = email.split("@");
    String def = null;
    String ghi = null;
    for(int i=0;i<a.length;i++){
        def = a[0];
        ghi = a[1];
    }

answered Nov 15 '12 at 11:48

sachin

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Finding a specific character in a string in Matlab

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