MATLAB: How to concatenate string vectors of unequal length

cell arraysconcatenate strings

If I have thee vectors v1 = {'a' 'b' 'c'}', v2 = {'d'}' and v3 = {'e' 'f'}', how do I create a four vector v4 =
'a' 'd' 'e'
'b' '' 'f'
'c' '' ''
?

Best Answer

Try this:
% Define component cell arrays.
v1 = {'a'; 'b'; 'c'}
v2 = {'d'}
v3 = {'e'; 'f'}
% Find out how big cell array needs to be.
lv1 = length(v1);
lv2 = length(v2);
lv3 = length(v3);
rows = max([lv1,lv2,lv3])
% Instatiate cell array of the max size.
v4 = cell(rows, 3)
% stuff each column in.
v4(1:lv1, 1) = v1;
v4(1:lv2, 2) = v2;
v4(1:lv3, 3) = v3;
% Print out results
fprintf('\n\nHere is the output cell array:\n');
v4
In the command window:
Here is the output cell array:
v4 =
'a' 'd' 'e'
'b' [] 'f'
'c' [] []