How do i check for empty cells within a list

How do i check for empty cells within list? I have a list of cells, namelist, and it has 12 values, i need to check if some of the cells are empty. Thanks

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

It is not clear what you mean by a "list of cells". Can you provide some code that illustrates what types of variables you are using? For example, by "cells", do you mean cell arrays?

Without more details, it is hard to answer your question, but there are functions isempty() and cellfun() that might be useful to you.

Edited in response to your comments:

 >> cellfun(@isempty,namelist)

does what I think you want. For example:

namelist = cell(2,6)
namelist{1} = 'abc'
namelist{12} = 3
cellfun(@isempty,namelist)

[Andy]

i just did

namelist = cell(2,6)

[Andy]

so now i am trying to check the different contents in the namelist thingy. so i want to do something like:

empty?((namelist(1,1))

and have the program return a 1 or 0, so i need to know what to put in place of empty?

[Andy]

is empty check for the whole list though, i just need to check individuals inside the list

[Jan]

cellfun('isempty') is much faster than cellfun(@isempty). The first version checks the number of elements directly in the Mex function, the later calls Matlab by mexCallMATLAB for each element.

[Thumree Sarkar]

This solution is faster and easier...

[Jan]

[EDITED, moved from flag to comment] LULU XUE wrote:

It's very useful!! inspiring！ Thanks

[WANG Jason]

This solution shows the power of Matrix:)

Answer 2

[topdawgnate]

Use the isempty function http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/isempty.html

%Build Cell array (note the curly brackets)

    A{1,1} = [1 4 3; 0 5 8; 7 2 9];
    A{1,2} = 'Anne Smith';
    A{2,1} = 3+7i;
    A{2,2} = [];

Use the isempty function

    isempty(A{2,2}) %Note the difference "{" and "(" brackets

This function will return 1.

Hope this helps. Nate

[Andy]

exactly what i needed, thanks!

[the cyclist]

Be aware that this solution checks a single element within a cell array. My solution checks every element in the cell array individually, and reports whether each cell is empty or not. That might be more efficient, depending on your application.