negative numbers on table

Hi there,

I have a cell with different types, for example cellN = {43.1; -29; 'xyz'}. Want to have a table with RowNames and VariableNames, and to do that, use cell2table.

When I do cell2table(cellN) I get the following 'Warning: Out of range or non-integer values truncated during conversion to character.'

After some search, I realised that is due to the negative number -29.

How to overcome this??

Thanks Rui

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Rui - I suspect that the problem is more likely due to the fact that you have included a string, 'xyz', in with your numbers. In fact, if I remove the string from your cellN example and run the code

 cell2table(cellN)

there is no error (like you, I observe the same warning when I leave the string in).

I think that the idea with the table is that all columns will be of a like data type, and you are mixing numbers with strings and so that can lead to unexpected behaviour (or warnings). If you wish to create a table from a cell array, then ensure that all elements in each column of the cell are of the same data type.

[Geoff Hayes]

Rui's answer moved here

Thanks Geoff.

But try keeping the string, and replacing -29 to 29. No error is issued. I guess the problem is not the different data types.

[Geoff Hayes]

Rui - I see your point, that works too. The full warning message (for R2014a) is

 Warning: Out of range or non-integer values truncated during conversion to character. 
 > In container2vars at 57
   In cell2table at 35

If you put a breakpoint at line 57 of containers2vars.m, where the code is

 for i = 1:size(cj,2), vars_j{i} = cat(1,cj{:,i}); end

and try to execute

 cat(1,cj{:,i})

you will see the warning AND an exception will be thrown

 Error using cat
 Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent.

Note that this error is thrown for your example of just using the 43.1 with the string. (The code catches the error and hides it so you don't see this.)

During the concatenation, there seems to be some sort of conversion to a character array due to the presence of the string, 'xyz'. So something like

 char(43.1)

"works" in that it produces a value of + (for whatever reason, try it and see), yet

 char(-29)

gives the warning. If no string is present then neither the warning nor the exception is thrown.

This suggests that the presence of the string is the culprit and should be removed.