Remove cell that contains strings of another cell array

26 views (last 30 days)
Input:
a={'Time12:30','Time12:40','Time1:40', 'Time2:40'};
b={'12:', '1:'};
Wanted Output: (delete from "a" all cells containing string listed in "b")
a={'Time2:40'}
I have tried:
for k = 1 : length(a)
for kk = 1 : length(b)
if any(~ismember(b{kk}, a{k}))
a(k) = [];
break;
end
end
end
However this gives me error of such:
Index exceeds matrix dimensions.
I am confused by the error and any guidance is appreciated! Thank you for reading my post.

Accepted Answer

James Tursa
James Tursa on 8 Aug 2016
Edited: James Tursa on 8 Aug 2016
You are changing the size of a in the loop with this line:
a(k) = [];
So subsequent iteration indexes that depend on the length of a will fail. Maybe save the indexes to delete in the loop, and then delete them all at once at the end. E.g., something like this:
a={'Time12:30','Time12:40','Time1:40', 'Time2:40'};
b={'12:', '1:'};
x = false(size(a)); % <-- Indexes to delete, start out nobody deleted
for k=1:numel(b)
x = x | ~cellfun(@isempty,strfind(a,b{k})); % <-- Flag the ones that b{k} matches
end
a(x) = []; % <-- Delete all the flagged lines at once

More Answers (2)

Stalin Samuel
Stalin Samuel on 8 Aug 2016
strfind(a, b(kk))%find a string from string array

Sean Mahnken
Sean Mahnken on 28 Mar 2019
You should be able to just do the k loop backwards:
for k = length(a):-1:1
for kk = 1 : length(b)
if any(~ismember(b{kk}, a{k}))
a(k) = [];
break;
end
end
end

Categories

Find more on Loops and Conditional Statements in Help Center and File Exchange

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!