MATLAB search cell array for string subset

Question

I'm trying to find the locations where a substring occurs in a cell array in MATLAB. The code below works, but is rather ugly. It seems to me there should be an easier solution.

cellArray = [{'these'} 'are' 'some' 'nicewords' 'and' 'some' 'morewords'];
wordPlaces = cellfun(@length,strfind(cellArray,'words'));
wordPlaces = find(wordPlaces); % Word places is the locations.
cellArray(wordPlaces);

This is similar to, but not the same as this and this.

Chris Taylor · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-24 11:39:28Z

7

The thing to do is to encapsulate this idea as a function. Either inline:

substrmatch = @(x,y) ~cellfun(@isempty,strfind(y,x))

findmatching = @(x,y) y(substrmatch(x,y))

Or contained in two m-files:

function idx = substrmatch(word,cellarray)
    idx = ~cellfun(@isempty,strfind(word,cellarray))

and

function newcell = findmatching(word,oldcell)
    newcell = oldcell(substrmatch(word,oldcell))

So now you can just type

>> findmatching('words',cellArray)
ans = 
    'nicewords'    'morewords'

answered Feb 24, 2012 at 11:39

Chris Taylor

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2 Comments

dgmp88 Over a year ago

Cheers! That works, but the thing is I was hoping there'd a be built in function for this, or at least a way to do it in less steps. If someone comes up with something great, if not I'll mark this as a solution in a few hours.

Chris Taylor Over a year ago

As far as I know there's no built-in function. I had the same problem myself a while back, and ended up writing these code snippets because I couldn't find a built-in that did what I wanted.

gnovice · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-24 15:41:06Z

4

I don't know if you would consider it a simpler solution than yours, but regular expressions are a very good general-purpose utility I often use for searching strings. One way to extract the cells from cellArray that contains words with 'words' in them is as follows:

>> matches = regexp(cellArray,'^.*words.*$','match');  %# Extract the matches
>> matches = [matches{:}]                              %# Remove empty cells

matches = 

    'nicewords'    'morewords'

answered Feb 24, 2012 at 15:41

gnovice

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2 Comments

dgmp88 Over a year ago

Excellent solution, but I'm terrified of regular expressions. It is less lines of code, but I've marked the above correct as I'd rather avoid regexp. Sorry, that feels a little unfair as this is correct and in a sense simpler.

gnovice Over a year ago

@dgmp88: I understand completely. Regular expressions do take some getting used to, but once you get the hang of them you feel like a superhero. ;)

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