Find duplicated values in a row and rename

I have a data array (100:500), and for the first vector(1,:) I would like to find the duplicated string values(the data in each cell is an string). For the result duplicated stings found I want to concatenate '_2'...'_n' depending on the duplicates found. I have try with the unique and histc functions but since is a vector of strings I could not achieve a good result.

I would really appreciate some help,

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

[Curtis N]

I'm sure you no longer need this, but as I was looking for this type of solution today, here's how I did it using A K's suggestion.

orig = {'a', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'b', 'a', 'b', 'a', 'e'}';
new = orig;
uniqStr = unique(orig);
for ii = 1:length(uniqStr)
    idx = strmatch(uniqStr{ii}, orig, 'exact');
    for jj = 2:length(idx)
        new{idx(jj)} = [orig{idx(jj)}, '_', num2str(jj)];
    end
end

compare = [orig, new]

compare = 

    'a'    'a'  
    'a'    'a_2'
    'b'    'b'  
    'c'    'c'  
    'd'    'd'  
    'b'    'b_2'
    'a'    'a_3'
    'b'    'b_3'
    'a'    'a_4'
    'e'    'e'

If somebody knows how to due this without loops, please share the solution.

Answer 2

[A K]

You can try using "unique" function to get a listing of all unique strings in your row vector

Next try using "strmatch" for each uniqe string found to see if they are repeated. You can try

index = strmatch('unique_string', array_of_strings, 'exact'), where index will point to the locations in array_of_strings where unique_string occurs.

[Manuel]

I have tried but does not work or I did not understund how should work, in raw(1,:) there are two duplicated strings and does not detect the match between the others.

 index = strmatch(unique(raw(1,:)), raw(1,:), 'exact')

Result:

   index =         []

Any more idea? thank you beforehand,