Built-in Function: str2double (s)

Convert a string to a real or complex number.

The string must be in one of the following formats where a and b are real numbers and the complex unit is 'i' or 'j':

• a + bi
• a + b*i
• a + i*b
• bi + a
• b*i + a
• i*b + a

If present, a and/or b are of the form [+-]d[,.]d[[eE][+-]d] where the brackets indicate optional arguments and 'd' indicates zero or more digits. The special input values Inf, NaN, and NA are also accepted.

s may also be a character matrix, in which case the conversion is repeated for each row. Or s may be a cell array of strings, in which case each element is converted and an array of the same dimensions is returned.

str2double returns NaN for elements of s which cannot be converted.

str2double can replace str2num, and it avoids the security risk of using eval on unknown data.

See also: str2num