MATLAB: How to read in, compare and then delete data from a cellarray

filterMATLAB

Hi,
How do I filter cellarray A to only return the unique values (i.e. in this example A319, A320, A321) once, then compare these unique values against a structure, B, removing any rows from B which do not contain the unique values from A? Example below:
I'm looking for a general solution as the values contained in A can change. Structure B will not change but I have reduced the size of it for example purposes only.
>> A
A = 
      'A319'
      'A319'
      'A320'
      'A320'
      'A319'
      'A320'
      'A321'
      'A320'
B = 'A306'    'A300B4-'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A30B'    'A300B4-'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A310'    'A310-20'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A319'    'A319-13'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A320'    'A320-21'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A321'    'A321'       'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A332'    'A330-24'    'non-metric'    'jet'
    'A333'    'A330-30'    'non-metric'    'jet'
so B should return…
      'A319'    'A319-13'    'non-metric'    'jet'
      'A320'    'A320-21'    'non-metric'    'jet'
      'A321'    'A321'       'non-metric'    'jet'
There are more columns (fields) in B, 101×15 to be exact.

Best Answer

Assuming that ‘A’ is an (8x1) cell and ‘B’ is a (8x4) cell, this will work for this example. This appears to be robust, since ismember returns all matches:
Lia = ismember(B(:,1), A);
C = B(Lia,:);
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