MATLAB: Problem with renaming dublicated variablenames

for looprename

Hi experts,
I want to rename a bunch of variables (ppn) by extending them with '_01' and I want to extend duplicate variablenames with '_02'. The problem is that I get variables named 'BG1028_02_01'. I hope someone can help me!
     ppn = {'BG1026';'BG1027';'BG1028';'BG1028';'BG1029';'BG1030'}
   for i = 1:length(ppn)-1
    j = i + 1;
    d = strcmp(ppn{i},ppn{j});
    if d == 0;
        ppn{i} = strcat(ppn{i},['_01']); 
    else d = 1;  
        ppn{i} = strcat(ppn{i},['_01']); 
        ppn{j} = strcat(ppn{j},['_02']);
    continue;
    end
end
This is what I get:
ppn = 
      'BG1026_01'
      'BG1027_01'
      'BG1028_01'
      'BG1028_02_01'
      'BG1029_01'
      'BG1030'

Best Answer

As long as you expect no more than 99 duplicates, this should solve your problem. You can remove the sort() call if your names will arrive sorted in the first place.
% Example list of names
ppn = {'BG1026';'BG1026';'BG1027';'BG1028';'BG1028';'BG1028';'BG1028';'BG1029';'BG1030'};
% Ensure that list is alphabetically sorted
ppn = sort(ppn);
% Append ones to everything
ppn = cellfun(@(s)[s '_01'],ppn,'UniformOutput',false);
% Check if any string is equal to previous string
idx = find(strcmp(ppn(1:end-1),ppn(2:end)))+1;
% Loop to rename variables
counter=2;
while ~isempty(idx) && counter<100,
    % Turn duplicate counter into 2-digit string
    counterstr=num2str(counter);
    if length(counterstr)==1,
        counterstr = ['0',counterstr];
    end,
    % Replace all duplicates with new counterstr
    for iter=1:numel(idx),
        ppn{idx(iter)}(end-1:end)=counterstr;
    end,
    % Update duplicate idx for next round of loop
    idx = idx(strcmp(ppn(idx),ppn(idx-1)));
    counter = counter+1;
end,
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