MATLAB: How to Convert a column with Char in Cell matrice to Number

cell arraysMATLABmatrixstring

  • I have a cell array:
A =
'Time'    'Name'    'Location'    'Duration'    'Remarks'
'100'    'John'        'Abc'        '1000'      'Nill'
'101'    'Tim'         'Def'        '1000'      'Nill'
'102'    'Tom'         'Ghi'        '2000'      'Nill'
'103'    'Jim'         'Jkl'        '4500'      'Nill'
Here I want to convert A(2:4, 1), and A(2:4, 4) to numbers and save to same matrice A.
I can do this using a LOOP and STR2DOUBLE(), but it is very time consuming when the matrice is very large.
Is there any method to convert a range of char-values in a cell matrice to to numbers?
I am looking for someting like:
A(2:4,  1) = str2double( A(2:4,  1) )      %This command is not working

A(2:4,  4) = str2double( A(2:4,  4) )      %This command is not working
  • Output should look like:
A =
'Time'    'Name'    'Location'    'Duration'    'Remarks'
100      'John'        'Abc'        1000          'Nill'
101      'Tim'         'Def'        1000          'Nill'
102      'Tom'         'Ghi'        2000          'Nill'
103      'Jim'         'Jkl'        4500          'Nill'

Best Answer

You almost got it right, you just need to split the numeric array into a cell array so that it can be allocated back to the cell array A:
A(2:4,1) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,1))) 
A(2:4,4) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,4)))
Or simply on one line:
A(2:4,[1,4]) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,[1,4])))
Related Question