What is the quickest way to create an empty cell array of strings ?
cell(n,m)
creates an empty cell array of double.
How about a similar command but creating empty strings ?
Depends on what you want to achieve really. I guess the simplest method would be:
repmat({''},n,m);
Assignment to all cell elements using the colon operator will do the job:
m = 3; n = 5;
C = cell(m,n);
C(:) = {''}
The cell array created by cell(n,m) contains empty matrices, not doubles.
If you really need to pre populate your cell array with empty strings
test = cell(n,m);
test(:) = {''};
test(1,:) = {'1st row'};
test(:,1) = {'1st col'};
This is a super old post but I'd like to add an approach that might be working. I am not sure if it's working in an earlier version of MATLAB. I tried in 2018+ versions and it works.
Instead of using remat, it seems even more convenient and intuitive to start a cell string array like this:
C(1:10) = {''} % Array of empty char
And the same approach can be used to generate cell array with other data types
C(1:10) = {""} % Array of empty string
C(1:10) = {[]} % Array of empty double, same as cell(1,10)
But be careful with scalers
C(1:10) = {1} % an 1x10 cell with all values = {[1]}
C(1:10) = 1 % !!!Error
C(1:10) = '1' % !!!Error
C(1:10) = [] % an 1x0 empty cell array
Related
I have two string arrays and I want to find where each string from the first array is in the second array, so i tried this:
for i = 1:length(array1);
cmp(i) = strfind(array2,array1(i,:));
end
This doesn't seem to work and I get an error: "must be one row".
Just for the sake of completeness, an array of strings is nothing but a char matrix. This can be quite restrictive because all of your strings must have the same number of elements. And that's what #neerad29 solution is all about.
However, instead of an array of strings you might want to consider a cell array of strings, in which every string can be arbitrarily long. I will report the very same #neerad29 solution, but with cell arrays. The code will also look a little bit smarter:
a = {'abcd'; 'efgh'; 'ijkl'};
b = {'efgh'; 'abcd'; 'ijkl'};
pos=[];
for i=1:size(a,1)
AreStringFound=cellfun(#(x) strcmp(x,a(i,:)),b);
pos=[pos find(AreStringFound)];
end
But some additional words might be needed:
pos will contain the indices, 2 1 3 in our case, just like #neerad29 's solution
cellfun() is a function which applies a given function, the strcmp() in our case, to every cell of a given cell array. x will be the generic cell from array b which will be compared with a(i,:)
the cellfun() returns a boolean array (AreStringFound) with true in position j if a(i,:) is found in the j-th cell of b and the find() will indeed return the value of j, our proper index. This code is more robust and works also if a given string is found in more than one position in b.
strfind won't work, because it is used to find a string within another string, not within an array of strings. So, how about this:
a = ['abcd'; 'efgh'; 'ijkl'];
b = ['efgh'; 'abcd'; 'ijkl'];
cmp = zeros(1, size(a, 1));
for i = 1:size(a, 1)
for j = 1:size(b, 1)
if strcmp(a(i, :), b(j, :))
cmp(i) = j;
break;
end
end
end
cmp =
2 1 3
I have an cell array composed by several strings
names = {'2name_19surn', '3name_2surn', '1name_2surn', '10name_1surn'}
and I would like to sort them according to the prefixnumber.
I tried
[~,index] = sortrows(names.');
sorted_names = names(index);
but I get
sorted_names = {'10name_1surn', '1name_2surn', '2name_19surn', '3name_2surn'}
instead of the desired
sorted_names = {'1name_2surn', '2name_19surn', '3name_2surn','10name_1surn'}
any suggestion?
Simple approach using regular expressions:
r = regexp(names,'^\d+','match'); %// get prefixes
[~, ind] = sort(cellfun(#(c) str2num(c{1}), r)); %// convert to numbers and sort
sorted_names = names(ind); %// use index to build result
As long as speed is not a concern you can loop through all strings and save the first digets in an array. Subsequently sort the array as usual...
names = {'2name_2', '3name', '1name', '10name'}
number_in_string = zeros(1,length(names));
% Read numbers from the strings
for ii = 1:length(names)
number_in_string(ii) = sscanf(names{ii}, '%i');
end
% Sort names using number_in_string
[sorted, idx] = sort(number_in_string)
sorted_names = names(idx)
Take the file sort_nat from here
Then
names = {'2name', '3name', '1name', '10name'}
sort_nat(names)
returns
sorted_names = {'1name', '2name', '3name','10name'}
You can deal with arbitrary patterns using a regular expression:
names = {'2name', '3name', '1name', '10name'}
match = regexpi(names,'(?<number>\d+)\D+','names'); % created with regex editor on rubular.com
match = cell2mat(match); % cell array to struct array
clear numbersStr
[numbersStr{1:length(match)}] = match.number; % cell array with number strings
numbers = str2double(numbersStr); % vector of numbers
[B,I] = sort(numbers); % sorted vector of numbers (B) and the indices (I)
clear namesSorted
[namesSorted{1:length(names)}] = names{I} % cell array with sorted name strings
Suppose I have a cell array containing strings:
c = {'foo1', 'foo2', 'foo3'}
I now want to add the same suffix "bar" to each string, such that the cell array becomes:
c = {'foo1bar', 'foo2bar', 'foo3bar'}
Is there a shortcut to doing this, without explicitly looping through each element?
strcat operates on cell arrays:
>> c = {'foo1', 'foo2', 'foo3'}
c =
'foo1' 'foo2' 'foo3'
>> c2 = strcat(c,'bar')
c2 =
'foo1bar' 'foo2bar' 'foo3bar'
What about using cellfun:
c=cellfun(#(x) strcat(x, 'bar'), c, 'Uniformoutput', 0);
I don't know if it's faster to run than a loop, but it's less tedious to write.
Edit: apparently strcat handles cell arrays. Use cellfun for functions that don't.
I want to create a binary number in matlab and am having difficulty concatenating the numbers.
Here's what I tried so far:
testarray = zeros(10,10)
testarray = num2str(testarray) % Convert all values to type string
testarray(1,1) = num2str(1); % Fill with abitrary value
testarray(1,1) = strcat(testarray(1,1), num2str(0)); % Trying to make '10' here but instead I get this error: "Assignment has more non-singleton rhs dimensions than non-singleton subscripts"
Any help would be appreciated.
In your example, the problem is that '10' has size [1,2], but testarray(1,1) has size [1,1]. So you might consider using cells instead:
testarray = cell(5,5);
testarray{1,1} = strcat(testarray(1,1), num2str(0));
By the way, you should have a look at the function dec2bin.
From the documentation:
dec2bin(23)
ans =
10111
The resulting value is a string.
So if you want to concatenate two binary values (encoded as strings), just do:
['10' '11']
ans =
1011
I have a string (eg. 'STA') and I want to make a cell array that will be a concatenation of my sting with a numbers from 1 to X.
I want the code to do something like the fore loop here below:
for i = 1:Num
a = [{a} {strcat('STA',num2str(i))}]
end
I want the end results to be in the form of {<1xNum cell>}
a = 'STA1' 'STA2' 'STA3' ...
(I want to set this to a uitable in the ColumnFormat array)
ColumnFormat = {{a},... % 1
'numeric',... % 2
'numeric'}; % 3
I'm not sure about starting with STA1, but this should get you a list that starts with STA (from which I guess you could remove the first entry).
N = 5;
[X{1:N+1}] = deal('STA');
a = genvarname(X);
a = a(2:end);
You can do it with combination of NUM2STR (converts numbers to strings), CELLSTR (converts strings to cell array), STRTRIM (removes extra spaces)and STRCAT (combines with another string) functions.
You need (:) to make sure the numeric vector is column.
x = 1:Num;
a = strcat( 'STA', strtrim( cellstr( num2str(x(:)) ) ) );
As an alternative for matrix with more dimensions I have this helper function:
function c = num2cellstr(xx, varargin)
%Converts matrix of numeric data to cell array of strings
c = cellfun(#(x) num2str(x,varargin{:}), num2cell(xx), 'UniformOutput', false);
Try this:
N = 10;
a = cell(1,N);
for i = 1:N
a(i) = {['STA',num2str(i)]};
end