How to search for substring in cell array and get the corresponding index then?

Dear community,

i have a very big 3D cell array that contains either doubles or strings. I need to find the cells that contain the string EXPERIMENT with the given index of my cell array.

I already tried approaches like strcmp or strfind, but I am still stuck.

Below is a picture of a subset of the cell array.

Thank you in advance,

Paul

Answer 1

[Askic V]

Please have a look at the following example:

C1 = {'Smith','Chung','Morales' [4 5 6]; ...
      'Sanchez','Peterson',1:15,'Adams';...
      'Adams','Johnson',[2.1 4.2],'Adams'}

C1 = 3×4 cell array
    {'Smith'  }    {'Chung'   }    {'Morales'                            }    {[4 5 6]}
    {'Sanchez'}    {'Peterson'}    {[1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15]}    {'Adams'}
    {'Adams'  }    {'Johnson' }    {[                      2.1000 4.2000]}    {'Adams'}

C2 = cellfun(@num2str,C1,'UniformOutput',false)

C2 = 3×4 cell array
    {'Smith'  }    {'Chung'   }    {'Morales'                                                  }    {'4  5  6'}
    {'Sanchez'}    {'Peterson'}    {'1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15'}    {'Adams'  }
    {'Adams'  }    {'Johnson' }    {'2.1         4.2'                                          }    {'Adams'  }

C3 = strfind(C2, 'Ada')

C3 = 3×4 cell array
    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {[       1]}
    {[       1]}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {[       1]}

ind = ~cellfun('isempty', C3)

ind = 3×4 logical array
   0   0   0   0
   0   0   0   1
   1   0   0   1

I think you should be able to use it in your own application. C1 becomes your val

Answer 2

[GeeTwo]

If I'm understanding correctly,

cellfun(@numel,strfind(string(val),"EXPERIMENT"))

will give you a matrix with 1's where the string is found and 0's where it isn't, whether due to it being a string without "EXPERIMENT" or not a string at all.

[Paul Hinze]

Hi

if i enter; cellfun(@numel,strfind(string(stimuli),"EXPERIMENT")), where stimuli is my variable i get following error message: Error using string

Conversion from cell failed. Element 1 must be convertible to a string scalar.