How to create vectors from a cell array?

I have a cell array consisting of 3 cells (1x10, 1x15, 1x20). How can I efficiently create 3 vectors?

1 Comment

Stephen23
Stephen23 on 3 Jul 2017
Edited: Stephen23 on 3 Jul 2017
@Yerzhigit Bapin: why can't you simply keep the data in the cell array and use indexing? Using indexing is much simpler and more efficient than creating/access variable names dynamically:

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Answers (2)

Adam
Adam on 3 Jul 2017
Edited: Adam on 3 Jul 2017
[a,b,c] = myCell{:};
Not advisable if the number of vectors you want to create escalates to the state that you are next going to ask how you name then a1, a2, a3, etc, but for just extracting an explicit number of outputs the above should work.

5 Comments

Thanks, that's actually was my concern, I'd like my code to be so that I don't need to include vectors manually.
If you do have a variable number of vectors then just keep them in a cell array and access them by index. Or put them into a struct if you really want, with individually named fields.
The latter approach works best where the vectors each relate to something with a meaningful name though rather than stuff you just end up naming a1, a2, a3. e.g. time, velocity, temperature, etc work fine for having independent vectors on a struct, but just arbitrary runs of data work better in a cell array.
ok, so this is what I have so far:
cv = cell(length(P_max),1) ;
for i = 1:length(P_max)
cv{i} = ones(1,P_max(i)) ;
end
I need to create the cumulative sum of all elements of each cell. What I've tried so far creates only one vector.
cellfun(@cumsum,C,'uni',0)
where C is your input cell array.

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Use deal():
% Setup: Make cell array consisting of 3 cells (1x10, 1x15, 1x20).
ca = {ones(1,10), rand(1,15), randi(9, 1, 20)}
celldisp(ca); % Display it.
% Make vectors
[v1, v2, v3] = deal(ca{:})
or simply assign the 3 vectors
v1 = ca{1};
v2 = ca{2};
v3 = ca{3};

Asked:

on 3 Jul 2017

Commented:

on 3 Jul 2017

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