How do I remove brackets/braces/quotes from table entries?

I am using cell2table to create a table displaying the reslults computed by my script. However, the table always comes out with brackets, quotes, etc depending on the class of the variable in that cell. Below are a few rows of the output table followed by a sample of the code used to compute the variables. This is all in a big "for" loop, and coord, t_A, rul, and forecast are all preallocated as cell arrays.

Test Point, (X,Y) Classification Time Until Aged Remaining Useful Life

___________________ ______________ _______________ _____________________

{'1, (2,2)' } "Healthy" {'N/A' } {'N/A' }

{'2, (3,3)' } "Healthy" {[ 2.4354]} {[ 7.5699]}

{'3, (4,5)' } "Healthy" {[0.78741]} {[ 4.916]}

coord(i) = {[num2str(i) ', (' num2str(x) ',' num2str(y) ')']};
classname(i) = "Aged";
if i==1
        t_A{1} = 'N/A';
        rul{1} = 'N/A';
    else
        if class(i) == 1
            t_A{i} = %numerical value
            rul{i} = %numerical value
        end
end
forecast(i,:) = {coord{i},classname(i),t_A{i},rul{i}};
results = cell2table(forecast(1:i,:),'VariableNames',{'Test Point, (X,Y)','Classification','Time Until Aged','Remaining Useful Life'});
 

[Stephen23]

https://web.archive.org/web/20201025055401/https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/625183-how-do-i-remove-brackets-braces-quotes-from-table-entries

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Those marks are not really there. They are added by the display routines to make the output clearer.

table objects are not designed for presentation purposes. Either use Report Generator with custom formatting, or else write your own display routines.

[Keenan Barazi]

Got it. I have to display results in the command window for a project I'm working on. I think I'll just use fprintf with the four variables I'm trying to display, and get rid of 'forecast' and that table completely. Thanks for the help.

[Walter Roberson]

I did think of an alternative. You could evalc and then regexprep to delete those characters.

[Peter Perkins]

Actually, Walter is (partially) incorrect. He's right that tabular display isn't really intended for presentation graphics, but the braces and brackets ought not to be there.

Keenan, your table is messed up. You have cell arrays where you should have numeric. The problem is that somewhere along the line you ended up with a cell array that was like

C =
  4×4 cell array
    {'Test Point, (X,Y)'}    {'Classification'}    {'Time Until Aged'}    {'Remaining Useful Life'}
    {'1, (2,2)'         }    {'Healthy'       }    {'N/A'            }    {'N/A'                  }
    {'2, (3,3)'         }    {'Healthy'       }    {[         2.4354]}    {[               7.5699]}
    {'3, (4,5)'         }    {'Healthy'       }    {[        0.78741]}    {[                4.916]}

And then

>> t = cell2table(C(2:end,:),'VariableNames',C(1,:))
t =
  3×4 table
    Test Point, (X,Y)    Classification    Time Until Aged    Remaining Useful Life
    _________________    ______________    _______________    _____________________
      {'1, (2,2)'}        {'Healthy'}        {'N/A'    }           {'N/A'   }      
      {'2, (3,3)'}        {'Healthy'}        {[ 2.4354]}           {[7.5699]}      
      {'3, (4,5)'}        {'Healthy'}        {[0.78741]}           {[ 4.916]}      

because 'N/A' is text and so those entire two columns in C stay as cell vectors in T because text and numeric can't be combined. What you want is

>> C{2,3} = NaN; C{2,4} = NaN;
>> t = cell2table(C(2:end,:),'VariableNames',C(1,:));
>> t.Classification = categorical(t.Classification);
>> t.(1) = string(t.(1))
t =
  3×4 table
    Test Point, (X,Y)    Classification    Time Until Aged    Remaining Useful Life
    _________________    ______________    _______________    _____________________
       "1, (2,2)"           Healthy                NaN                  NaN        
       "2, (3,3)"           Healthy             2.4354               7.5699        
       "3, (4,5)"           Healthy            0.78741                4.916        

I used categorical on one of the variables, which displays the category names without quotes. You could do the same with the test point var, or not.