is it possible to find a particular letter throughout different cells in a table

I have a data table of mostly numbers, but every once in a while the numbers are proceeded by a j or a Q. j is important bc it denotes a specific set of values applicable to the numeric portion of the cell.

a matrix may look like

1,2,3
4,j 5,6
7,8,Q 9

is there a way to identify which cells have a J value? I tried the isnan function but this includes the Q values and won't work given the size of the spreadsheets

[Jan]

Please be exact: Do you have a table object or a matrix? In the 2nd case 1 and j cannot appear in a numerical matrix, then it would be a cell matrix. Without a clear definition, what the input is, posting an answer requires to guess the important detail. "I tried the isnan function" is not as helpful as posting the your code. "won't work given the size of the spreadsheets" is not clear to me. What does this mean? Where do "spreadsheets" come into play?

Answer 1

[Matt Brianik]

Hi Jan,

I am reading in a spreadsheet with results from soil samples at different locations testing the levels of the same set of compounds. the samples are generally reported as a numeric, (Ex: 5) however if the sample taken contained an amount of water above a certain limit, the sample will read (EX: J 5) this happens randomly.

I attached a sample of a datatable, "N.D" means non detect because the compound wasn't detected.

I read the file in using

Table=xlsread'example.csv'