MATLAB: How to access element with same index from multiple cells

accessindex

For example, we have
a = cell(2,2);
a{1} = 1:4;
a{2} = 1:4;
a{3} = 1:4;
a{4} = 1:4;
How can we access like
a{:}(1)
to extract all first elements in cells a ?

Best Answer

 >> extract = @(C, k) cellfun(@(c)c(k), C) ;
 >> extract(a, 1)
 ans =
     1     1
     1     1
 >> extract(a, 3)
 ans =
     3     3
     3     3
if you want to make a lightweight function for extracting various elements of various cell arrays, or simply
 >> cellfun(@(c)c(1), a)
 ans =
     1     1
     1     1
if it is just for cell array a and you are fine with hard coding the element # in the expression.
Related Question