ISALPHA ISALPHA Test for Alpha Characters in a String Usage The isalpha functions returns a logical array that is 1 for characters in the argument string that are letters, and is a logical 0 for characters in the argument that are not letters. The syntax for its use is x = isalpha(s) where s is a string. Note that this function is not locale sensitive, and returns a logical 1 for letters in the classic ASCII sense (a through z, and A through Z).