How can I turn strings like 1-14 into 01_014? (and for 2-2 into 02_002)?
I can do something like this:
testpoint_number = '5-16';
temp = textscan(testpoint_number, '%s', 'delimiter', '-');
temp = temp{1};
first_part = temp{1};
second_part = temp{2};
output_prefix = strcat('0',first_part);
parsed_testpoint_number = strcat(output_prefix, '_',second_part);
parsed_testpoint_number
But I feel this is very tedious, and I don't know how to handle the second part (16 to 016)
As you are handling integer numbers, I would suggest to change the textscan to %d (integer numbers). With that, you can use the formatting power of the *printf commands (e.g. sprintf).
*printf allows you to specify the width of the integer. With %02d, a 2 chars wide integer, which will be filled up with zeros, is printed.
The textscan returns a {1x1} cell, which contains a 2x1 array of integers. *printf can handle this itsself, so you just have to supply the argument temp{1}:
temp = textscan(testpoint_number, '%d', 'delimiter', '-');
parsed_testpoint_number = sprintf('%02d_%03d',temp{1});
Your textscanning is probably the most intuitive way to do this, but from then on what I would recommend doing is instead converting the scanned first_part and second_part into numerical format, giving you integers.
You can then sprintf these into your target string using the correct 'c'-style formatters to indicate your zero-padding prefix width, e.g.:
temp = textscan(testpoint_number, '%d', 'delimiter', '-');
parsed_testpoint_number = sprintf('%02d_%03d', temp{1});
Take a look at the C sprintf() documentation for an explanation of the string formatting options.
sprintf()for the second part? e.g.new_string = sprintf("%02d_%03d", first_part, second_part)