How to display the celcius sumbol (°C) using fprint??

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I am creating an output file using fprint and want to display the unit of temperature in Celcius. Anyone knows how to do this?

Accepted Answer

Stephen23
Stephen23 on 23 Jun 2015
Edited: Stephen23 on 4 Dec 2019
Here are four methods:
fid = fopen('temp.txt','wt');
fprintf(fid,'symbol one: °C\n');
fprintf(fid,'symbol two: %cC\n',176);
fprintf(fid,'symbol three: %cC\n',char(176));
fprintf(fid,'symbol four: \260C\n');
fclose(fid);
And the generated file:
symbol one: °C
symbol two: °C
symbol three: °C
symbol four: °C
EDIT: Added octal syntax based on Walter Roberson's comment.
  7 Comments
Michael
Michael on 3 Dec 2019
Out of curiosity, where do the codes in Walter's helpful comment come from? I knew that the degree symbol could be produced by Alt + 0176 so it didn't surprise me that passing 176 to a %c in fprintf gave me the right symbol.
>> fprintf('%c\n',176)
°
However, for my particular application, I can avoid needing to add a cumbersome workaround if I could put the symbol right in the format string. But these didn't give me what I expected:
>> fprintf('\176\n')
~
>> fprintf('\x176\n')
Ŷ
>> fprintf('\0176\n')
~
>> fprintf('\x0176\n')
Ŷ
Obviously using the code Walter suggested worked, but how did you know the degree symbol was \260?
>> fprintf('\260\n')
°
Stephen23
Stephen23 on 4 Dec 2019
Edited: Stephen23 on 4 Dec 2019
"but how did you know the degree symbol was \260?"
Simply convert decimal to octal: 176 (decimal) = 260 (octal).
The fprintf documentation give two syntaxes for specifying any unicode character directly:
  • using hexadecimal '\xN'
  • using octal '\N'
The value 176 is decimal, so it cannot be used directly with either of those syntaxes, but if you convert it to the correct base it it will work exactly as documented (although watch out for the catch that Walter Roberson showed when using hexadecimal with a trailing 'C' character).

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More Answers (1)

Ingrid
Ingrid on 23 Jun 2015
first search the previous answers and you will find what you are looking for: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/32376-degree-symbol
I prefer to use:
^{\circ}
  2 Comments
Stephen23
Stephen23 on 23 Jun 2015
Edited: Stephen23 on 23 Jun 2015
The syntax ^{\circ} applies to MATLAB text objects (e.g. title, etc) using the TeX or LaTeX interpreters, not to fprintf as the OP is asking about.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 4 Dec 2019
\circ is also a work-around. I am told that publications do not like \circ as it is not considered a correct degree symbol. I seem to recall it is not raised at the correct height for a proper degree symbol.

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