slow char({str})

[Ben Abbott]

I noticed a substantial amount of time is needed to convert a cell  
string into a string

octave:50> tic; char ({repmat("a", [1, 100000])}); toc
Elapsed time is 11.9 seconds.

but ...

octave:51> tic; char ({repmat("a", [1, 100000])}{1}); toc
Elapsed time is 0.001117 seconds.

Can someone with skilled in c++ take a look?

Ben