MATLAB: How to search for specific string in a cell array

string find

I have a cell array C= 100,000×1 size. within this cell array, certain rows are the name of the months. How can I find the location of these months from C? There could be several number of months in C and the location of the months are random. Please help.

Best Answer

Provided that C is a cell array that contains only strings,

monthnames = {'Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'};    %or as appropriate
[tf, idx] = ismember(C, monthnames);

Now tf and idx will be arrays same size as C. tf(I,J) true indicates that C(I,J) matches one of the months, and for those locations, idx(I,J) tells you which of the months was matched.

If your cell array contains non-strings as well then

tf = cellfun(@(S) ischar(S) && ismember(S, monthnames));

and finding the index efficiently is trickier.

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MATLAB: Find a string from a cell array

a = {'Mon 22-08-2016'
'Mon 22-08-2016'
'Mon 22-08-2016'
'Tue 23-08-2016'
'Tue 23-08-2016'
'Tue 23-08-2016'
'Tue 23-08-2016'}
idx = find(cellfun(@(x) ~isempty(x),strfind(a,'23-08-2016')),1,'first')

MATLAB: How to write a function to convert numerical month of the year to the name of that month

Hints (probably too much of a hint):

months = {'January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', ...
  'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December'};
monthNumber = 3;  % Whatever .. use inputdlg() to ask user.
if monthNumber > 1 && monthNumber < length(months)
  theMonth = months{monthNumber}
end
switch monthNumber
  case {1,2,3,............. You finish it!
    fprintf('You picked month %s\n', months..... You finish it!
  otherwise
    fprintf('Invalid month number of %d', monthNumber);
end

You're going to have to finish/fix it and add the elseif to the "if" case to alert user to the invalid month. If you want to do it with 11 elseif's and check every number from 1 to 12 individually, you can do that, but it's really completely unnecessary since you can get the month with a simple index into the months array.

Best Answer

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MATLAB: Find a string from a cell array

MATLAB: How to write a function to convert numerical month of the year to the name of that month

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