strtok is only using the first character of my delimiter instead of the full character vector

I am trying to use strtok to split a character vector using a character vector as my delimiter. However, MATLAB is only using the first character in the vector.

For example,

tok=strtok('Hello World','HAIR')

Returns

tok='ello World'

Instead of 'Hello World'

[Guillaume]

I'm curious why you think that it should return 'Hello World' when H is one of the delimeter you specified.

Your strtok(xxx,'HAIR') explicitly tells matlab that H, A, I, or R is a delimiter.

[Samuel Morstein]

Oh I thought that it told matlab that the word itself was the delimiter not each individual character. How do I make it so that only HAIR is the delimiter and not H, A, I, or R?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

"How do I make it so that only HAIR is the delimiter and not H, A, I, or R?"

You can't do that with strtok. The simplest is to regexp with the 'split' option:

>> regexp('Hello World HAIR xyz HAIRdo', 'HAIR', 'split')
ans =
  1×3 cell array
    {'Hello World '}    {' xyz '}    {'do'}

Note: read the documentation of regexp as some characters such as .+- have special meaning.

Answer 2

[Peng Li]

why don't you use strsplit instead?

>> a = strsplit('Hello World', 'HAIR')

a =

  1×1 cell array

    {'Hello World'}

>> a = strsplit('HHAIRello World', 'HAIR')

a =

  1×2 cell array

    {'H'}    {'ello World'}