How can i combine two column of a matrix into one column?

I have a matrix of order m by 3. All three (3) columns contain numeric values; I want to do a sequence of operation as follows:

1. Convert the last two column into text while the first one remain numeric;
2. Combine the last two columns that have now text values into a one column hence the matrix order will be reduce to m by 2;

Please guide me how can i do that. I am a new user of matlab. I would be very thankful for urgent reply.

T. Islam

[Jan]

Please post a minimal example. What is the expected result for: [1,2,3; 4,5,6]? Consider, that you cannot mix numerical and string data in one matrix, but this is possible in a cell.

The term "urgent" is counter-productive in this forum, which is supported by volunteers in their spare-time. I'd suggest to delete it.

Answer 1

[Adam Filion]

You cannot mix data types inside of a matrix, but you could do this instead inside of a cell. For example

A = magic(3);
B = cell(size(A,1),size(A,2)-1);
for i=1:3
    B{i,1} = A(i,1);
    B{i,2} = [num2str(A(i,2)) ' ' num2str(A(i,3))];
end

[EDIT] changed code to better match problem description

[Ryan]

To combine the last two columns into a string:

A = magic(3);
A = num2cell(A);
for i=1:size(A,1)
    A{i,2} = [num2str(A{i,2}),num2str(A{i,3})];
end
A(:,3) = [];
A

Input A:

8 1 6
3 5 7
4 9 2

Output A:

8 '16'
3 '57'
4 '92'

[Adam Filion]

Forgot about removing the last column with [], good way to go about it to avoid creating a new variable.