Matlab Justify Strings - string

Question

I'm using Matlab R2014b (that's why I cannot use strings, but only char vectors). Working inside a class, I have to take data from a table variable, format it following my needs, and then insert it into a GUI table (an instance of uitable, to be exact):
function UpdateTable(this)
siz = size(mydata);
tab = cell(siz);
tab(:,1) = num2cell(this.Data.ID);
tab(:,2) = cellstr(datestr(this.Data.Date,'dd/mm/yyyy'));
tab(:,3) = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.TypeDef1{x,1}},this.Data.Type1);
tab(:,4) = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.TypeDef2{x,1}},this.Data.Type2);
tab(:,5) = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.FormatNumber(x)},this.Data.Value);
this.UITable.Data = tab;
end
Where:
properties (Access = private, Constant)
TypeDef1 = {
'A1' 'Name A1';
'B1' 'Name B1';
'C1' 'Name C1';
'D1' 'Name D1';
...
}
TypeDef2 = {
'A2' 'Name A2';
'B2' 'Name B2';
'C2' 'Name C2';
'D2' 'Name D2';
...
}
end
methods (Access = private, Static)
function str = FormatNumber(num)
persistent df;
if (isempty(df))
dfs = java.text.DecimalFormatSymbols();
dfs.setDecimalSeparator(',');
dfs.setGroupingSeparator('.');
df = java.text.DecimalFormat();
df.setDecimalFormatSymbols(dfs);
df.setMaximumFractionDigits(2);
df.setMinimumFractionDigits(2);
end
str = char(df.format(num));
end
end
Everything is working fine. Now I would like to right justify the strings to be inserted in columns 1 and 5, to improve the table readability. I found the Matlab function that suits my needs, strjust. Reading the documentation, I saw that it can be used with cell arrays of char vectors, so I modified part of my UpdateTable code as follows:
tab(:,1) = cellstr(num2str(this.Data.ID));
tab(:,5) = strjust(arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.FormatNumber(x)},this.Data.Value));
TThe second one produces no changes (strings are still not justified). Should the strings already contain enough whitespace to be all the same length?

Answer 1

Ok, I solved the problem by myself using the following code:
function UpdateTable(this)
siz = size(this.Data);
los = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.FormatNumber(x)},this.Data.Value);
los_lens = cellfun(#(x)numel(x),los);
pad = cellfun(#blanks,num2cell(max(los_lens) - los_lens),'UniformOutput',false);
tab = cell(siz);
tab(:,1) = cellstr(num2str(this.Data.ID));
tab(:,2) = cellstr(datestr(this.Data.Date,'dd/mm/yyyy'));
tab(:,3) = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.TypeDef1{x,1}},this.Data.Type1);
tab(:,4) = arrayfun(#(x){MyClass.TypeDef2{x,1}},this.Data.Type2);
tab(:,5) = cellstr(strcat(pad,los));
this.UITable.Data = tab;
end
It's probably not the most elegant solution, but it works. Starting from Matlab 2016, the padding can be performed using the built-in pad function.