MATLAB: How to replace elements of a cell array using a containers.Map

Question

I have a cell array of VariableNames that Matlab created when reading a csv file. I want to change them to my own choice of names however, the order of the names is not guaranteed.

iddata = readtable('data.csv');
var_names = iddata.Properties.VariableNames;
names_to_replace = {'TonnageDeBSA', 'D__bitD___eauAuBSA', ...
                    'PressionPalierSAG', 'PuissanceSAG'};
replacements = {'TonnageBSA', 'DebitEauBSA', ...
                'PressionPalierSAG', 'PuissanceSAG'};
replace_map = containers.Map(names_to_replace, replacements);

Obviously I could use a for loop:

new_var_names = {};
for i=1:numel(var_names)
    new_var_names(i) = {replace_map(var_names{i})};
end

But I am hoping there is an easier way.

Does MATLAB have anything like a list comprehension in Python?

new_var_names = {replace_map[name] for name in var_names}

Even better if there is a way to handle failed matches:

new_var_names = {replace_map[name] for name in var_names if name in replace_map}

Answer 1

You might want to try out arrayfun, which can help you in applying a function to each element of array.

Otherwise, you can also do the above mentioned operation traditionally using for loop.