Accessing Character Vectors Within Cell Arrays, Output Is Size of Character Vector, not Contents?

I am on an older version of MATLAB (R2014A), and trying to output text that is stored in character vectors that are stored in a cell array.

I noticed that when I enter the character arrays manually there is no issue:

myStrings = repmat({''}, 1, 10);
for i = 1:10
    myStrings{i} = 'This character array is quite lengthy but still prints to screen normally.';
end
myStrings'

Output: Column vector with the above sentence in every cell. (I want this)

But when I do something similar MATLAB outputs the size of each character array instead of the contents. [SomeStructure.SomeData is a cell vector where each cell is a character vector]

myStrings2 = repmat({''},1,10);
for i = 1:10
    myStrings2{i} = SomeStructure.SomeData{i};
end
myStrings2'

Output: A column vector with entries simply listing the size of the char array (i.e [1x25 char]). (I get this)

When I view this SomeStructure.SomeData in my workspace, I see the strings I want, but when I call it in the console it also outputs these sizes. How do I get these strings/character vectors to behave the way I want? i.e, like the first block of code?

Other maybe helpful notes:

1. When I call SomeStructure.SomeData, to the console one of the entries is a regular string and not the size of the string (last entry).
2. I get the data structure by reading from input files using:

function [PS_Data] = getPSData(N,directory)

%N is number of rows in data input files for PS
%direct is directory where .txt files are stored

oldfolder = pwd; %keep track of old directory
 
cd(directory); %change dir to file directory

files = dir('*.txt'); %grabs all files in current directory

for k = 1:length(files)
    
    file = files(k).name; %look at a specific file
    fid = fopen([pwd '\' file]); %open it
    
    my_field = strtok(files(k).name,'.'); %chops off '.txt' for variable name

    for i = 1:N
        PS_Data.(my_field){i} = fgets(fid);
    end

    fclose(fid); %close file 
    
end

Answer 1

[Joel Bay]

The work around I ended up going with to sovle this issue was directing the user to the work space, but I figured out the reason why, hopefully this helps someone in the future.

fgets includes the newline character at the end of your string if there is one in your input file (at least in 2014a), which makes the strings too long and will not display to console when trying to view the entire cell array. So in a sense the other poster was correct, however, this is easily remedied using strtrim().

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/strtrim.html

[dpb]

Just use fgetl() instead. Rarely does one really want the control characters inside the file; echo-ing the file in a copy operation or the like is about the only time would ever be any advantage in doing so. Otherwise, just read the data.

Answer 2

[dpb]

While not your specific question, couldn't help but recast your function using standard MATLAB functions for various operations with file names.

In general, not a wise idea to cd; use a fully-qualified filename instead. fullfile is very useful for purpose as is fileparts for the converse operation. NB: your function, while recording the working directory on entry, never restored the environment before leaving...rude! :)

function [PS_Data] = getPSData(N,directory)
%N is number of rows in data input files for PS
files = dir(fullfile(directory,'*.txt'));  % all files in directory
for k = 1:length(files)
  fid=fopen(fullfile(pwd,files(k).name));
  [~,my_field]=fileparts(files(k).name);
  for i = 1:N
    PS_Data.(my_field){i} = fgets(fid);
  end
  fclose(fid); %close file 
end

As to the question itself, it's just a fignewton of the display of various data types in ML command window. The data in the struct will be complete but many of the displays when data are long are summarized to show summary of content rather than the full contents when are large. There's nothing you can do at the command line to change this default display behavior other than explicitly dereference the cell content to the character vector underlying it.

[Joel Bay]

Oops, I forgot to include the cd(oldfolder) at the end of my function, regardless thanks for the tip on best practice!

So I did suspect that the data may just be too long like you are saying, but actually that sentence I enter manually in the example is able to be displayed without issue, and it is longer than the character arrays I am trying to display. Is there any way it could be an error on my part and not a delicious cookie?