Matlab, two string cell comparison

Question

I have some string name in cell. I want to compare some name in other cell with it.

For example first column of first cell with all column of the second one.

in the following example cell a and cell b. as you see many element of column 3 match element of column 3 of the above one. I want to compare column by column.

Is there any way without using loop for cell comparison ?

 a=

'virutass'  'BrucePerens'   'RogerBrowne'   'keverets'
'armando'   'srivasta'      'riel'          'theo'
[]          'wichert'       'acme'          'rgb'
[]          'joey'          'aoliva'        'benc'
[]          'buffy'         'connolly'      'azz'
[]          'willow'        'itamar'        'dorward'
[]          'gnuchris'      'Kay'            'nuked'
[]          'edward'        'sab39'          'Yashy'
[]          'rcw'            'sad'           'idallen'
[]          'JHM'          'davem'            []
[]          'jgg'           'Blacky'          []



b=

 'sp'       'Erbo'         'connolly'     'draco'
'thomasd'   'miguel'       'joey'            []
'isenguard' 'mathieu'      'Kay'             []
'yole'      'fejj'         'acme'            []
'ewan'      'harinath'     'sad'             []

if more than 60% of elements is in one column the result is the column number. In this example column 3 of a is the result.because column 3 in b match it for more than %60 of elements.

Could you please give a example from the above cells ? Pick any name — P0W
– P0W, Commented Jul 28, 2013 at 13:29
@Fatime What about the result? How do you want the result to look like for this specific example? — Eitan T
– Eitan T, Commented Jul 28, 2013 at 15:01

Matthieu · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-28 17:30:12Z

1

Use of anonymous functions and cell/arrayfun with ismember function may help to resolve your needs:

If you don't really need to keep rows and columns:

% Remove empty cells to compare only strings
emptyCells = @(x) cellfun(@isempty,x);
a(emptyCells(a)) = [];
b(emptyCells(b)) = [];

% Get ids of element of b included in a
id = cellfun(@(elem) ismember(elem, a), b);

% Shows resutls
b(id)

If you really need to keep the comparaison between rows of your cells:

nColumns = 4
emptyCells = @(x) cellfun(@isempty,x);
% get only the non-empty values of the cell
getValue = @(dataCell) dataCell(not(emptyCells(dataCell)));

% Compare for each columns, values of b(:,col) and a(:,col)
isBinA = arrayfun(@(col) ismember(getValue(b(:,col)), getValue(a(:,col))), 1:nColumns, 'UniformOutput', 0);

Here you get a cell with logical values, for example :

isBinA{3}

ans =

     1
     0
     1
     1
     1

In the columns 3 of the cell b, you have 4 names which are included in the columns 3 of cell a:

b(isBinA{3},3)

ans = 

    'connolly'
    'Kay'
    'acme'
    'sad'

edited Jul 28, 2013 at 17:30

answered Jul 28, 2013 at 16:07

Matthieu

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1 Comment

Fatime Over a year ago

please follow this similar question in stackoverflow.com/questions/17915254/matlab-cell-comparision.

user2613077 · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-28 16:11:24Z

1

Do you want to compare the cells columnwise(cell1column1 with cell2column1, cell1column2 with cell2colun2.....) and check for at least 60% match? Is order important (if the same name is in both columns, but different rows, is it OK)?

if length(intersect(a(:,1),b(:,1)))>0.6*length(b(:,1))
disp('Column 1 is good')
else
disp('Column 1 is bad')
end
if length(intersect(a(:,2),b(:,2)))>0.6*length(b(:,2))
disp('Column 2 is good')
else
disp('Column 2 is bad')
end
if length(intersect(a(:,3),b(:,3)))>0.6*length(b(:,3))
disp('Column 3 is good')
else
disp('Column 3 is bad')
end
if length(intersect(a(:,4),b(:,4)))>0.6*length(b(:,4))
disp('Column 4 is good')
else
disp('Column 4 is bad')
end

answered Jul 28, 2013 at 16:11

user2613077

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