Remove Duplicate Rows in a Cell Array

Hello,

I'm trying to remove duplicate rows in a cell array. I'm familiar with the 'unique' function for use on vectors (or individual columns of a cell array) but I'm stumped on how to work on the whole array at once.

What I'm looking for is the same as the Excel button "Remove Duplicates" which does this:

withduplicates={
'Bear'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'
'Bear'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'
'Bear'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'
'Bear'  'Miami'   '2 yr'
'Bear'  'Miami'         '2 yr'
'Lion'  'Denver'  '1 yr'
'Lion'  'Miami'   '2 yr'
'Lion'  'Miami'         '2 yr'
'Lion'  'Miami'         '2 yr'
'Tiger'  'Denver'  '1 yr'
'Tiger'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'
'Tiger'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'}

withoutduplicates={
'Bear'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'
'Bear'  'Miami'   '2 yr'
'Lion'  'Denver'  '1 yr'
'Lion'  'Miami'         '2 yr'
'Tiger'  'Denver'  '1 yr'
'Tiger'  'Chicago'  '1 yr'}

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

wd=withduplicates;

[~,idx]=unique(  strcat(wd(:,1),wd(:,2),wd(:,3)) , 'rows');

withoutduplicates=wd(idx,:)

[Nicholas]

That worked! Thank you.

[Nicholas]

I'm getting an orange warning in the Command Window every time I run the code you gave:

"Warning: The 'rows' input is not supported for cell array inputs."

How do I suppress this?

Thanks.

[Matt J]

Ah. Just omit the 'rows' input argument, then. It's not necessary.

[Arne T]

How do you handle following Problem:

withduplicates={
'exampleA'  'example'
'example'  'Aexample'}

Cause this rows are not the same, but your code would delete one of them.

[Matt J]

Nowadays, you would just use strings,

withoutduplicates=unique(string(withduplicates),'rows')

[Michael Boateng]

This worked well. Thank you.