How to extract column number of a variable in matlab table?

How to extract column number of a variable in matlab table? For example, the column number of the variable A2 in a table: table.A2 is 2. How do I use “table.A2” as input to extract the column#: 2 and save 2 in another variable? Thank you very much.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

One approach —

T1 = array2table(randn(7,5), 'VariableNames',{'A1','A2','A3','A4','A5'})

T1 = 7×5 table
       A1          A2          A3           A4          A5   
    ________    ________    _________    ________    ________

     -1.9106    -0.22123     -0.47514    -0.06542     0.13593
    -0.14144     -1.8162      -1.1542     0.55953    -0.22285
     -2.8992     0.23029      0.61249     0.12032      1.4226
      1.2559     0.94259    -0.027742      1.2783     -1.6119
      1.4119    -0.18684      0.78489     0.29917     -1.2797
     -0.6079    -0.43467    -0.093609    -0.45867     -1.4682
     -1.2539     -1.2575      -1.5183     0.21204      2.1747

VN = T1.Properties.VariableNames;
Lvc = cellfun(@(x)strcmp(x,'A2'), VN, 'Unif',0);
ColNr = find(cell2mat(Lvc))

ColNr = 2

.

[Voss]

Note that strcmp works with a cell array of character vectors, so cellfun and cell2mat are unnecessary in this case:

T1 = array2table(randn(7,5), 'VariableNames',{'A1','A2','A3','A4','A5'})

T1 = 7×5 table
       A1          A2           A3           A4          A5   
    ________    ________    __________    ________    ________

    -0.40518      -1.296       -0.5102    0.098651      1.4641
     -1.1006    -0.53507    -0.0015906    -0.50055    -0.66593
    -0.72622    -0.50025       -0.9243     0.90477      -1.174
     0.65818    -0.43009       -1.1515     0.42241     -1.2278
    -0.41902     -1.3493        1.1826       1.302     0.36007
     -1.3057     -1.3507      -0.80558     0.12925    -0.88737
     0.42965      1.0593      -0.27105     0.73376     0.49773

VN = T1.Properties.VariableNames;
ColNr = find(strcmp(VN,'A2'))

ColNr = 2

[Star Strider]

I had problems getting that to work when I tried it. That’s the reason I went with cellfun in the end.