Write unicode strings to a file in Matlab - matlab

Question

I have a string containing urdu characters like 'بجلی' this is a 1x4 array. I want to save this to a file, which would be viewed externally. Although this string doesnt display in the main Command Window, but variable 'str' does hold it. When I save this using fprintf(fid, str), and open that file in notepad there appear 'arrows' instead on the original characters. I can easily paste my characters into notepad manually. Where is the problem?

Answer 1

You need to use fwrite() not fprintf():
fid = fopen('temp.txt', 'w');
str = char([1576, 1580, 1604, 1740, 10]);
encoded_str = unicode2native(str, 'UTF-8');
fwrite(fid, encoded_str, 'uint8');
fclose(fid);
verified with:
perl -E "open my $fh, q{<:utf8}, q{temp.txt}; while (<$fh>) {while (m/(.)/g) {say ord $1}}"
1576
1580
1604
1740

Answer 2

It's not really necessary to avoid fprintf in order to write UTF-8 strings in a file. The idea is to open correctly the file:
f = fopen('temp.txt', 'w', 'native', 'UTF-8');
s = char([1576, 1580, 1604, 1740]);
fprintf(f, 'This is written as UTF-8: %s.\n', s);
fclose(f);

Answer 3

looking up every character in character map may seem hard. The code can be modified into the following code :
fid = fopen('temp.txt', 'w');
str = char(['س','ل','ا','م');
encoded_str = unicode2native(str, 'UTF-8');
fwrite(fid, encoded_str, 'uint8');
fclose(fid);
This seems to be easier but the only drawback is that it requires you to have Arabic/Persian/Urdo,... installed.