How to transform a cell of Different size arrays into a matrix

Hello, being trying to implemnt a Run length encoder/decoder in matlab, and i have being having an issue in my code where cell2mat gives me this error with some Images

Error using cat

Dimensions of arrays being concatenated are not

consistent.

Error in cell2mat (line 83)

m{n} = cat(1,c{:,n});

at a closer inspection i realized that the encoded cell arrays of the images that give the error are not the same size, so im wondering if there is a way to circumvent that

here is my code:

clear all;
%***reading a matrix x from the directory c:\
[x,map]=imread(['c:\mAT\12m.tif']);
f=size(x);

c=1;
y={};
z=[];

for i=1:f(1)
    y{i}=[];
    for j=1:f(2)-1
        if x(i,j)==x(i,j+1)
            c = c + 1;
        else
            y{i}=[y{i} c x(i,j)];
            c=1;
        end
        
    end
    y{i} =[y{i} c x(i,f(2))];
    c=1;
end
y

k=size(y);
z={};
for s=1:k(2)
    a=size(y{1,s})
    L=1;
    z{s}=[];
    while(L<a(2))
        for n=1:y{1,s}(1,L);
            z{s}=[z{s} y{1,s}(1,L+1)];
        end
        L = L+2;
        
    end
    
end

new_z=cell2mat(z(:))

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

at a closer inspection i realized that the encoded cell arrays of the images that give the error are not the same size, so im wondering if there is a way to circumvent that

No, there is no way around that. You are trying to produce a 2D numeric array based on elements that are different sizes. MATLAB does not support irregular numeric arrays. MATLAB will never support irregular numeric arrays.

The closest you can get is if you pad short rows.

maxlen = max(cellfun(@length, z));
z = cellfun(@(V) [V, nan(1, maxlen-length(V))], z, 'uniform', 0);
new_z = vertcat(z{:});