I have an array of numbers in MATLAB eg.,
a = [1 1 1; 2 2 1; 3 3 2; 4 5 1];
and I would like to replace the numbers with strings.
eg., 1= "apples"; 2= "hello"; 3 = "goodbye";
I can for example replace with other numbers eg.,
a(a==1) = 999
a(a==2) = 998
but I need to accomplish the same kind of thing by replacing with string. Not easy to me can someone help me out ? Thanks, Matilde
In case your numbers always start with 1 and every number should be replaced, that's just indexing:
>> mp={'apples','hello','goodby'}
mp =
'apples' 'hello' 'goodby'
>> a = [1 1 1; 2 2 1; 3 3 2]
a =
1 1 1
2 2 1
3 3 2
>> mp(a)
ans =
'apples' 'apples' 'apples'
'hello' 'hello' 'apples'
'goodby' 'goodby' 'hello'
This could be one approach to handle mixed data of strings and numbers for a cell array output -
%// Numeric array and cell array of input strings
a = [1 1 1; 2 2 1; 3 3 2; 4 5 1];
names = {'apples','hello','goodbye'}
%// Create a cell array to store the mixed data of numeric and string data
a_cell = num2cell(a)
%// Get the mask where the numbers 1,2,3 are which are to be replaced by
%// corresponding strings
mask = ismember(a,[1 2 3])
%// Insert the strings into the masked region of a_cell
a_cell(mask) = names(a(mask))
Code run -
a =
1 1 1
2 2 1
3 3 2
4 5 1
names =
'apples' 'hello' 'goodbye'
a_cell =
'apples' 'apples' 'apples'
'hello' 'hello' 'apples'
'goodbye' 'goodbye' 'hello'
[ 4] [ 5] 'apples'
I don't know, if you really want to replace the values or create a new array of the same size with the strings in it. As the others pointed out, you need a cell array to store the strings.
a = [1 1 1; 2 2 1; 3 3 2; 4 5 1];
aStrings = cell(3,4)
aStrings(a==1) = {'apples'}
