MATLAB: Create new column in cell array based on string values in other columns

Question

In my cell array, I have three columns containing strings: 'string1' 'string2' 'string3'

I would like to add a new column containing a combination of the other three strings (separated by '_'): 'string1_string2_string3'

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Use strjoin to merge the strings and a loop to go over the rows:

C = {'aaa', 'b', 'cccc';
     'string1', 'string2', 'string3'}
newcol = size(C, 2) + 1;
for row = 1 : size(C, 1)
   C{newcol, 4} = strjoin(C(row, :), '_');
end

Or using cellfun instead of a loop:

newC = cellfun(@(row) [row, strjoin(row, '_')], num2cell(C, 2), 'UniformOutput', false)
newC = vertcat(newC{:})