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arraysstringmatlabcell
Benvaulter
Benvaulter

Reputation: 249

Matlab find string within cell array

I have a cell array (n-by-1 dimension) containing both strings and cells, which looks something like this

{
{'r1'}     % -> cell content is in format 'char'
{'r2'}     % -> cell content is in format 'char'
{1x2 cell} % -> cell content is a cell array: [{'r1'}{'r2'}]
{'r3'}     % -> cell content is in format 'char'
{1x2 cell} % -> cell content is a cell array: [{'r1'}{'r3'}]
{1x2 cell} % -> cell content is a cell array: [{'r2'}{'r3'}]
{1x3 cell} % -> cell content is a cell array: [{'r1'}{'r2'}{'r3'}]
...
}

I need to find the row-index where the some string is included, e.g. 'r2'. I usually use strfind for this purpose which works great if the cell array has a consistent format (hence 'char'-format within each cell).

Is there any way to apply this function to the cell array structure which is displayed above?

Thanks!

EDIT: Please find attached three images showing the data structure that I am using, since I am not sure how to exactly show/explain the hierarchies and layers of the cell array in text. Hope that helps. Also find attached the outcome of the code.

Code used:

change = 'r1.m';
srch = cellfun(@(x) strfind(x, change), strats, 'UniformOutput', false);
stringInRow = cellfun(@(x) numel(x) == 1 || (numel(x)>1)*numel(cell2mat(x))>0, srch);
rows = find(stringInRow);

cell array

example of cell array within cell 5,1

last "layer" in char format

outcome in 'srch'

outcome of logical operation on srch

Upvotes: 0

Views: 650

Answers (1)

dfrib
dfrib

Reputation: 73176

You could use two subsequent cellfun calls: one to perform the string search (cell by cell), and one to evaluate it (found string true or not false?)

%// example data
c{1} = 'r1';     
c{2} = 'r2';    
c{3}{1} = 'r1'; c{3}{2} = 'r2';
c{4} = 'r3';
c{5}{1} = 'r1'; c{5}{2} = 'r3';

%// example search
searchForString = 'r2';
srch = cellfun(@(x) strfind(x, searchForString), c, 'UniformOutput', false);
stringInRow = ...
  cellfun(@(x) numel(x) == 1 || (numel(x)>1)*numel(cell2mat(x))>0, srch);
               %// ^-. short-circuit scalars here     ^
               %//                                    |
               %// since cell2mat is valid only for cells or empty arrays

With resulting stringInRow:

stringInRow =

     0     1     1     0     0

If you want to explicitly list the rows, you can just make use of find on the stringInRow boolean vector

>> foundStringInRows = find(stringInRow)

foundStringInRows =

     2     3

Upvotes: 3

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