Listings problem with quotes in a string

Question

A single quote occuring inside a listings string seems to be interpreted as ending the string. Is there a way to avoid this from happening?

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[top=0.3in, bottom=1.2in, left=0.8in, right=0.8in]{geometry}

\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}

\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{listings}

\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table]{xcolor}

\begin{document}

\lstset{language=Matlab,
        basicstyle=\ttfamily,
        keywordstyle=\color{Blue}\ttfamily,
        stringstyle=\color{Red}\ttfamily,
        commentstyle=\color{Emerald}\ttfamily,
        morecomment=[l][\color{Magenta}]{\#},
        breaklines=true,
        breakindent=0pt,
        breakatwhitespace,
        columns=fullflexible,
        showstringspaces=false
}


\begin{lstlisting}
a=1;
if a==1
    disp('Is 1')
elseif a==2
    disp('Is 2')
else
    disp('I don't know')
end
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

Answer 1

Because single quotes are used as string delimiters in Matlab, you need to escape that character in order to make it part of the string. This is done by typing two single quotes in a row:

disp('I don''t know')

The Matlab language defined by listings is clever enough to typeset the right thing, in this case:

As a side note, you might be interested in the matlab-prettifier package; see this answer.

Answer 2

A possible solution from listings.pdf with mathescape parameter:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[top=0.3in, bottom=1.2in, left=0.8in, right=0.8in]{geometry}

\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\usepackage{listings}




\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table]{xcolor}

\begin{document}

\lstset{language=Matlab,
        basicstyle=\ttfamily,
        keywordstyle=\color{Blue}\ttfamily,
        stringstyle=\color{Red}\ttfamily,
        commentstyle=\color{Emerald}\ttfamily,
        morecomment=[l][\color{Magenta}]{\#},
        breaklines=true,
        breakindent=0pt,
        breakatwhitespace,
        columns=fullflexible,
        showstringspaces=false
}


\begin{lstlisting}[mathescape]
a=1;
if a==1
    disp('Is 1')
elseif a==2
    disp('Is 2')
else
    disp('I don$\texttt{\color{red}'}$t know')
end
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}