Add space before values in xticklabels (MATLAB)

Question

I'm new to MATLAB and really struggling with their datatypes / conventions compared to other programming languages.

For instance, I have created a simple plot (e.g. using the peaks command) and simply want to include a padding space before all xticklabels. My MATLAB/pseudocode solution is thus:

labels = xticklabels;    # Get labels
newlabels = xticklabels;  # Create new array 
i = 1
for label in labels   # Loop through all labels
    label = ' ' + label   # Add single character pad
    newlabels(i) = label  # Update new labels array
    i = i + 1

set(gca,'XTickLabel', {newlabels})  # Set plot to use new array

How can I achieve this please? I feel like it should be possible quite simply

Thanks!

PS, I have found the pad command in MATLAB2017, but not all my xticklabels are equal length and hence, I only want to add one trailing space, not fix the total string length using pad

Answer 1

The simplest way, given a cell array of strings, is to use strcat:

labels = {'1','2','3','4'};
newlabels = strcat('x',labels);   % append 'x' because it's more visible

Result:

newlabels =
{
  [1,1] = x1
  [1,2] = x2
  [1,3] = x3
  [1,4] = x4
}

Alternatively, you could loop through the cell array and concatenate to each char array:

newlabels = cell(size(labels));   % preallocate cell array
for k = 1:numel(labels)
   newlabels{k} = ['x', labels{k}];   % concatenate new char to existing label
end