Finding number in a string

Dear all and thanks for your help, I have a Cell array (D) in which each cell is composed of string and characters like AB878546HD. In anoter cell (C) I have a list of numbers and I want to find the location of each number in cell C in cell D.

I have tried to use the strfind function k = strfind(D,C{2}) but it didn’t work - I didnt get an errore but got ans=[] .

If instead of C{2} I write k = strfind(D,'38306') it works and the wanted cell was founded. So I dont know what is wrong Any help will be appreciated, here is example parts of C

' 36462' ' 38306' ' 3113' ' 1305' ' 22608' ' 11086' ' 7541'

and D

 'jgi|Thaps3|40|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000008' 
'jgi|Thaps3|36462|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000014' 
'jgi|Thaps3|3113|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_5000009' 
'jgi|Thaps3|93|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_8000006' 
'jgi|Thaps3|105|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_9000002' 
'jgi|Thaps3|168|fgenesh1_pm.C_chr_1000013'
Shilo

[Friedrich]

Actually strfind(D,C{2}) should work when the number in C are also strings. If not use strfind(D,num2str(C{2})).

Can you give us an example how D and C are actually looking?

[Shilo]

Thanks Friedrich, but it didnt work also. here is example parts of C

' 36462'

' 38306'

' 3113'

' 1305'

' 22608'

' 11086'

' 7541'

and D 'jgi|Thaps3|40|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000008'

'jgi|Thaps3|46|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000014'

'jgi|Thaps3|55|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_5000009'

'jgi|Thaps3|93|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_8000006'

'jgi|Thaps3|105|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_9000002'

'jgi|Thaps3|168|fgenesh1_pm.C_chr_1000013'

If instead of C{2} I write k = strfind(D,'38306') it works. So I dont know what is wrong

[Friedrich]

What exactly is not working? Do you get an error? If so, what does the error say?

[Sean de Wolski]

Please edit your question to contain the complete example.

[Shilo]

Hi Friedrich,

I didnt get and error but when I use find(~cellfun('isempty', k));

I got ans =[]

Thanks

Answer 1

[Ken Atwell]

The following will create a numeric array, N, where the value of N(x) indicates which element of D contained the string C(x). If no match was found, N(x) is NaN. The text search includes the '|' delimiter to avoid cases like "93" matching not only "93", but also "930", "931", "193", "293", etc.

 D= {'jgi|Thaps3|40|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000008' ... 
 'jgi|Thaps3|36462|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_4000014' ...
 'jgi|Thaps3|3113|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_5000009' ...
 'jgi|Thaps3|93|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_8000006' ...
 'jgi|Thaps3|105|fgenesh1_kg.C_chr_9000002' ... 
 'jgi|Thaps3|168|fgenesh1_pm.C_chr_1000013' };

 C = {' 36462' ' 38306' ' 3113' ' 1305' '22608' ' 11086' ' 7541'};

 C = strtrim(C); % Trim whitespace from C
 N = nan(size(C));
 for i = 1:numel(C);
     found = find(cellfun(@(x) ~isempty(x), strfind(D, ['|' C{i} '|'] )));
     if ~isempty(found)
         N(i) = found;
     end
 end
 N

An exceptionally clever person might determine a way to do this without a for loop, but it would likely sacrifice readability.

[Shilo]

Hi Ken,

Thanks a lot - It works great

Shilo