How can I search for specific string in a cell array

I have a cell array C= 100,000x1 size. within this cell array, certain rows are the name of the months. How can I find the location of these months from C? There could be several number of months in C and the location of the months are random. Please help.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Provided that C is a cell array that contains only strings,

monthnames = {'Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'};    %or as appropriate

[tf, idx] = ismember(C, monthnames);

Now tf and idx will be arrays same size as C. tf(I,J) true indicates that C(I,J) matches one of the months, and for those locations, idx(I,J) tells you which of the months was matched.

If your cell array contains non-strings as well then

tf = cellfun(@(S) ischar(S) && ismember(S, monthnames));

and finding the index efficiently is trickier.

[Sami Rahman]

thanks you so much Walter Roberson. ismember did the trick!