How can I use strcmp (or something else) to compare to multiple strings at once?

I want to compare all the strings in a cell (messages) to a list of string and return true if it matches any of them.

It should match the function of:

trialSplitPoints = find(strcmp('TRIALID 1',messages));

but for 'TRIALID 1' through 'TRIALID 8'.

Answer 1

[Titus Edelhofer]

Hi,

apart from Walter's method there are two additional:

1. Use regexp (unfortunately here I can't help, I've never really understood regular expressions)
2. You can do partial comparison:

trialSplitPoints = find(strncmp(messages, 'TRIALID', length('TRIALID')));

Note, it's strncmp, not strcmp.

Titus

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

tf = ismember(messages, {'TRIALID 1', 'TRIALID 2', 'TRIALID 3', ... 'TRIALID 8'})

tf will be an array the same shape as "messages", indicating for each cell array element whether it matches any of the listed items.