Elements into a String

I have a two cell arrays, one consisting of food items to eat and another of what not to eat.

For example: C = {'ham', 'cheese', 'bread'} <--- food to eat and D = {'milk', 'apples', 'cherry'}

I need to put the items from both cell arrays into a string that is formatted like this:

'I can eat ham, cheese and/or bread, but do not eat milk, apples or cherry'

The number of elements in the cell arrays will not always be three; it is not consistent.

I am having trouble separating elements with commas and the last two items with an 'and/or' and 'or.'

There should not be a comma before the 'and/or' or the 'or.'

Also if there are only two items in a cell array then the output string should look lik this: 'I can eat ham and/or cheese, but do not eat milk or apples'

where there are no commas.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

['I can eat ', strjoin(C(1:end-1), {', '}), ' and/or ', C{end}, ' but do not eat' .....]

You will need to modify this, however, for the case where there is only one item in the cell array.

[Stephen23]

This code is only a partial solution. See my answer for a complete working solution.

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

C = {'ham', 'cheese', 'bread'};
D = {'milk', 'apples', 'cherries'};

X(2,:) = C;
Y(2,:) = D;
X(1,:) = {', '};
Y(1,:) = {', '};
X{1,end} = ' and/or ';
Y{1,end} = ' or ';
fmt = 'I can eat %s, but do not eat %s.';
out = sprintf(fmt,[X{2:end}],[Y{2:end}])

displays this in the command window:

out = I can eat ham, cheese and/or bread, but do not eat milk, apples or cherries.

And we can change the input arguments to check that it deals with the 'and/or' correctly:

D = {'cherries'};
... run the code again to produce this:
out = I can eat ham, cheese and/or bread, but do not eat cherries.

C = {'ham', 'cheese'};
... run the code again to produce this:
out = I can eat ham and/or cheese, but do not eat cherries.

C = {'ham'};
... run the code again to produce this:
out = I can eat ham, but do not eat cherries.

And it also expands nicely for longer lists too:

C = {'ham', 'cheese', 'bread', 'antelope', 'tofu', 'kimchi'};
D = {'apples'};
... run the code again to produce this:
out = I can eat ham, cheese, bread, antelope, tofu and/or kimchi, but do not eat apples.

[Dan Lynn]

Thank you!

[Stephen23]

My pleasure. You can also vote for answers that are useful for you.