MATLAB: Identify and delete a specific column

Question

Hi guys!

I need to delete 1 specific column, which may be in different positions (e.g. it can be the 1st, 2nd or 3rd column) depending on the file in use. The specific column to delete is the one where in the 1st row indicates 'O' (O for the element Oxygen). This might be simple, but I'm at beginner level. Any help would be very much appreciated!

Answer 1

YourCellArray(strcmp(YourCellArray(1, :), 'O'), :) = []

will delete all columns for which the first row is 'O'.

With regards to the data structure, it's fine to have it as you have as a cell array, but maybe better would be to have a table with just numbers and name the columns after the elements:

composition = cell2table(YourCellArray(2:end, :), 'VariableNames', YourCellArray(1, :));

To remove the 'O' column is then trivial:

composition.O = [];