Valid Combinations of Unlike Classes - MATLAB & Simulink (original) (raw)

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Matrices and arrays can be composed of elements of almost any MATLABĀ® data type as long as all elements in the matrix are of the same type. If you do include elements of unlike classes when constructing a matrix, MATLAB converts some elements so that all elements of the resulting matrix are of the same type.

Data type conversion is done with respect to a preset precedence of classes. The following table shows the five classes you can concatenate with an unlike type without generating an error. The one exception in the table is that you cannot convert logical values to thechar data type.

TYPE character integer single double logical
character character character character character invalid
integer character integer integer integer integer
single character integer single single single
double character integer single double double
logical invalid integer single double logical

For example, concatenating a double and single matrix always yields a matrix of type single. MATLAB converts the double element to single to accomplish this.