How to remove repeating characters in a character array?

For example, I have a 4 x 2 char array, moviecountry. It looks like this, ['US'; 'FR'; 'US'; 'CA']. I would like to have another character array, states, that only stores the non-repeating elements of this array, so in this case, states = ['US'; 'FR'; 'CA']. I have the following code right now:

states = [];
for jj = 1:size(moviecountry,1) 
    currentcountry = moviecountry(jj,:); %set temp country and compare with other
    if jj == 1
        states = [currentcountry];
    end
    for kk = 1:size(states,1)
        if ~ismember(currentcountry, states(kk, :))
            states = [states;currentcountry]%only add to output if no repetition
        end
    end
end

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

See unique.

[Rui Xu]

Got it! I tried unique at first and thought it didn't work for char arrays. Had to convert it to a cell. Thank you so much!

[Adam Danz]

cellstr() or string()

Glad I could help.

[Stephen23]

" I tried unique at first and thought it didn't work for char arrays."

It does.

"Had to convert it to a cell."

Converting to cell is not required:

M = ['US'; 'FR'; 'US'; 'CA']

M = 4×2 char array
    'US'
    'FR'
    'US'
    'CA'

unique(M,'rows','stable')

ans = 3×2 char array
    'US'
    'FR'
    'CA'

[Adam Danz]

Note Stephen's use of column vectors. If M is a row vector you won't be able to use this method.

[Stephen23]

@Adam Danz: I just copied the char array verbatim from the question: "I have a 4 x 2 char array, moviecountry. It looks like this, ['US'; 'FR'; 'US'; 'CA']."