MATLAB: Finding strings in a cell array that start with a specific substring

Question

Hello, I'm looking for a specific implementation using the available functions in MATLAB 2015b.

If I have the following cell array

A = {'test' 'hello' 'world' 'st1' 'st2' 'st99'}

I would like to return a cell array B containing all elements that are of the form 'stXXX', where XXX is any number.

In the above example, I would like B to return as:

B = {'st1' 'st2' 'st99'}

In previous implementations, I have been able to get away with the following line:

B = A(not(cellfun('isempty',strfind(A,'st'))

but unfortunately in example A, the element 'test' is also triggering because it contains the 'st' substring. I'm just looking for code that doesn't have to be implented via a for loop. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Try this

A = {'test' 'hello' 'world' 'st1' 'st2' 'st99'}
matches = regexp(A,'^st\d+$','match')
B = [matches{:}]