MATLAB: Making cell array of cells of strings the same size by adding empty strings

Question

Hello,

Could someone please help me with the following:

I have a cell array of cells containing strings. The cells withing the cells have different length. I would like to write an empty string '' to make all the cells the same size.

Cell array of cells of string example:

c = {{'a1', 'B20', 'd_3'}; {'b44', 'C5', 'e_12', 'k234'}; {'a8', 'T565', 'V-d3'}; {'b44', 'C5', 'e_12', 'k234', 'k234', 'k234'}};
c =
4×1 cell array
    {1×3 cell}
    {1×4 cell}
    {1×3 cell}
    {1×6 cell}
len = cellfun('length', c)
len =
3
4
3
6

I need all the cells in c to be the same length, ie of length max(len) which is 6. I would like to add empty Strings '' from the last value to the 6th columns for all the cells that have a length that is less than 6.

so I would like to transform c into a cNew that would look like this this:

cNew =  {{'a1', 'B20', 'd_3', '', '', ''}; {'b44', 'C5', 'e_12', 'k234', '', ''}; {'a8', 'T565', 'V-d3', '', '', ''}; {'b44', 'C5', 'e_12', 'k234', 'k234', 'k234'}};
cNew =
4×1 cell array
    {1×6 cell}
    {1×6 cell}
    {1×6 cell}
    {1×6 cell}
    
len = cellfun('length', cNew) 
len =
6
6
6
6

If anyone could help I would be very grateful, thank you.

Best Regards;

Cecile

Answer 1

maxlen = max(cellfun(@numel, yourcellarray));
newcellarray = cellfun(@(s) [s, repmat({''}, 1, maxlen - numel(s))], yourcellarray, 'UniformOutput', false);

would be one way.