How can I search through a row in a cell array to find strings?

I have imported data as a cell array from excel via the xlsread function.

I have searched through the first column in the array using

for i= find(strcmp('string',filename)).  This gives me the correct rows that I need to look through to find strings.

How do I search through these found rows to find strings? The array is full of empty spaces and strings. I do not need a specific string, I need any string within that row.

Thank you

[sixwwwwww]

can you show your complete code and your data to ans the question in a better way

[Justin]

Here is my code thus far:

%%Import data from spreadsheet
%    Workbook: MyDATA.xlsx
%    Worksheet: Data Correlation
%%Import the data
[~, ~, MyDATA] = xlsread('MyDATA.xlsx','Data Correlation');
MyDATA(cellfun(@(x) ~isempty(x) && isnumeric(x) && isnan(x),MyDATA)) = {''};

for i= find(strcmp('DIRs',MyDATA));

       %Rows=~all( cellfun( @isempty, MyDATA(i,:) ) );

      Rows= find( ~cellfun( @isempty, MyDATA(i, :) ) );

end

Ultimately, I am trying to go through the rows for each DIR and see what Alerts happen within 36 hours of the DIR.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

find( ~cellfun( @isempty, YourArray(i, :) ) )

or if you just care whether there is anything non-empty

~all( cellfun( @isempty, YourArray(i,:) ) )

[Justin]

~all( cellfun( @isempty, YourArray(i,:) ) )

seemed to work. It returned a 1 or a 0 for each column that contained a string in the rows labeled DIR.

find( ~cellfun( @isempty, YourArray(i, :) ) )

worked as well. This I believe returned cell numbers for each string within the rows labeled DIRs.

Thank you

Answer 2

[sixwwwwww]

Dear Justin, you can find the occurances of string 'DIRs' in cell array as follow:

[~, ~, MyDATA] = xlsread('filename.xlsx','Data Correlation');
MyDATA(cellfun(@(x) ~isempty(x) && isnumeric(x) && isnan(x),MyDATA)) = {''};
str = 'DIRs';
StringFoundAt(1, :) = {'Row number', 'Starting index'};
count = 2;
for i = 1:size(MyDATA, 1)
    row = MyDATA(i, :);
    row = row(cellfun(@(x) (~isempty(x)) && (~isnumeric(x)), row));
    if ~isempty(row)
        idx = strfind(row, str);
        idx = idx(cellfun(@(x) ~isempty(x), idx));
        if ~isempty(idx)
            StringFoundAt(count, :) = {i, cell2mat(idx)};
            count = count + 1;
        end
    end
end

I hope it helps. Good luck!

[Justin]

This code stores the first string in row 161, column 1 and any other string in row 161 for the row variable. It is only searching through the last row in MyDATA.

The 'Starting index' within the StringFoundAt variable shows 1 for every 'Row number'.

idx stores a blank cell.

The other variables I believe are functioning correctly. I wish I could explain better. Sorry, I'm not very good at this. Ha. Thank you.

[sixwwwwww]

It is the result which I obtained from this code and data you provided in the attachment:

'Row number'  'Starting index'
4    1
10    1
16    1
22    1
28    1
34    1
40    1
46    1
52    1
58    1
64    1
70    1
76    1
82    1
88    1
94    1
100    1
106    1
112    1
118    1
124    1
130    1
136    1
142    1
148    1
154    1
160    1

Is this result you want? Is it correct?

[Justin]

That is the result that I got as well. What exactly is the 'starting index'. Thank you

[sixwwwwww]

Starting index means DIRs appears in the row given by Row number and at position given by Starting index. So

'Row number'  'Starting index'
4    1

means that string DIRs appears at start(because Starting index = 1) of the in row 4. Is that what you need?

[Justin]

I know which rows contain DIRS in the first column. I was more wanting to find which columns within those DIR rows contain strings, not including the column that is labeled DIRS. Thank you.