Concatenate cell array in only 1 dimension in Matlab

Question

I have a 2 dimensional cell of tables, B, in Matlab, i.e.:

A = table(normrnd(0,1,5,1),normrnd(0,1,5,1),normrnd(0,1,5,1));

B = {A,A,A,A;A,A,A,A}

B = 

[5x3 table]    [5x3 table]    [5x3 table]    [5x3 table]
[5x3 table]    [5x3 table]    [5x3 table]    [5x3 table]

I would like to concatenate the tables in the 1st dimension of the cell array (the 2 rows), but keep the cell structure in the other dimension. Thus, I would like to have the following:

{cat(1,B{:,1}),cat(1,B{:,2}),cat(1,B{:,3}),cat(1,B{:,3})}

ans = 

[10x3 table]    [10x3 table]    [10x3 table]    [10x3 table]

However, since my actual cell array has much more than 2 rows and 4 columns, this is not a suitable solution. I have tried using cat and vertcat, but I can't get them to not concatenate in the second dimension. Using ´cat´, I get:

cat(1,B{:})

ans = 

[40x3 table]

Any ideas?

Thanks!

eigenchris · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-23 15:17:13Z

1

Try this:

result = cellfun(@(a,b) cat(1,a,b),B(1,:),B(2,:),'UniformOutput',false);

The output:

result = 

    [10x3 table]    [10x3 table]    [10x3 table]    [10x3 table]

(We need to set UniformOuput to false because the contents of the output cells are not scalars.)

The contents of one of the cells in my case:

result{1}

ans = 

      Var1       Var2        Var3  
    ________    _______    ________

    -0.20497     0.6715      1.0347
    -0.12414    -1.2075     0.72689
      1.4897    0.71724    -0.30344
       1.409     1.6302     0.29387
      1.4172    0.48889    -0.78728
    -0.20497     0.6715      1.0347
    -0.12414    -1.2075     0.72689
      1.4897    0.71724    -0.30344
       1.409     1.6302     0.29387
      1.4172    0.48889    -0.78728

edited Mar 23, 2015 at 15:17

answered Mar 23, 2015 at 14:59

eigenchris

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4 Comments

Mace Over a year ago

I should have mentioned this, but my real cell-array also have many rows, so I would need a solution where I don't need to add a cell-array for each row (B(1,:),B(2,:),...).

eigenchris Over a year ago

@Mace Off the top of my head I can't think of a solution without using for loops. I'll comment again if I come up with anything.

eigenchris Over a year ago

@Mace What type of data are in your tables? If it's all numerical we could do something with cell2mat and mat2cell, but I suspect there are things like variable-length strings too?

Mace Over a year ago

Yes, there will be both strings and numeric data

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