I am trying to get peoples names from a csv file using their birth month, how can I do this?

Hi everyone I just went through a class from matlab and C programing last semester, so I'm pretty new to programming. I am trying to get a code working that will prompt the user to input a month then the program will check a file and pull the names from that and print them to the screen. This is my code so far:

%Finding people who have a birthday this month
[num, char, raw] = xlsread('book1.csv');

%Search month
monthcheck = input('Enter name of month to search:', 's');

%Reading file
[r, c] = size(raw);
x = 1;
y = 0;
for i = 1:r
%The structure will be set as month, day, and lastname 
employees(i).monthcheck = raw(i,3);
    for a = 2
        employees(i).firstname(a-1) = char(i,1);
    end
    for b = 2
        employees(i).day(b-1) = raw(i,4);
    end
    for c = 2
        employees(i).lastname(c-1) = raw(i, 2);
    end
end

repQP=0;
%Allow the code to search for months that are duplicated in the Book 1 data,
%and determining whether the month actually exists or not in the book 1 data
for i = 1:r

      %if both of the strings are read by the code as the same, this mean
      %repition is occuring which would be 1
      repititionQP = strcmp(monthcheck, employees(i).monthcheck);
      if(repititionQP == 1)
          repQP = repQP + 1;
      end

      %Else if statement will be utilize to determine the position of the
      %name in the book 1 data set
      if(repQP == 0)
          x = x + 1;
          firstname = char(x,1);
          lastname = char (x,2);
      end
  end

%If the code cannot find the month in book 1 data, then it will display a
%statement letting user know that the name was not found.
%The code will also ask user to submit a last name, so the code can
%reattempt to find the name again.
if(repQP == 0)
    disp('ERROR! The month was not found');
end

%Displaying all first and last names with that birthday month
fprintf ('People who have birthdays in %s are:\n %s %s\n', monthcheck, firstname, lastname);

These are the errors I'm getting:

Error using fprintf Function is not defined for 'cell' inputs. Error in Birthdaycheck (line 55) fprintf ('People who have birthdays in %s are:\n %s %s\n', monthcheck, firstname, lastname);

Also here are a few lines of my csv with their layout:

Barry French March 23

Carlos Soltero September 2

Monica Federle January 31

Dorothy Smith July 14

Salvador Daly March 29

Claudia Schneider December 25

I pulled some of this code from a program I did in class to find the days from/till a birthday in a csv file. Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance for any help! Also Sorry this was so long.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

raw is a cell array, so

employees(i).monthcheck = raw(i,3);

is copying a cell array into employees(i).monthcheck rather than the contents of the cell, which would be raw{i,3};

Note:

          x = x + 1;
          firstname = char(x,1);

Your x is numeric. char(x,1) means the same as [char(x), char(1)] . That does not format the numeric value of x as a printable decimal number: that looks up the character code associated with unicode position #x . For example when x = 1, then char(x) is the Start of Header control character, https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0001/index.htm

Shouldn't you be copying something from either raw or the employees structure ?

[Joshua Denton]

So i changed the line to

employees(1).monthcheck = raw{i,3}

and it's still giving me the same errorors as before.

I'll be honest I'm not sure the class I took was super basic and barely covered csv files so I am not super familiar with extracting data from a csv file.

[Walter Roberson]

You need to change the other references to raw() as well, and you need to fix those uses of char()

[Joshua Denton]

Ok cool thanks! With those changes my program is now printing the first name in the file that has that birthday. Do I just need to move where my print statement is to get all the names with that birth month to print?

[Walter Roberson]

Please post your revised code.

[Joshua Denton]

%Finding people who have a birthday this month
[num, raw, raw] = xlsread('book1.csv');

%Search month
monthcheck = input('Enter name of month to search:', 's');

%Reading file
[r, c] = size(raw);
x = 1;
y = 0;
for i = 1:r
%The structure will be set as month, day, and lastname 
employees(i).monthcheck = raw{i,3};
    for a = 2
        employees(i).firstname(a-1) = raw(i,1);
    end
    for b = 2
        employees(i).day(b-1) = raw(i,4);
    end
    for c = 2
        employees(i).lastname(c-1) = raw(i, 2);
    end
end

repQP=0;
%Allow the code to search for months that are duplicated in the Book 1 data,
%and determining whether the month actually exists or not in the book 1 data
for i = 1:r

      %if both of the strings are read by the code as the same, this mean
      %repition is occuring which would be 1
      repititionQP = strcmp(monthcheck, employees(i).monthcheck);
      if(repititionQP == 1)
          repQP = repQP + 1;
      end

      %Else if statement will be utilize to determine the position of the
      %name in the book 1 data set
      if(repQP == 0)
          x = x + 1;
          firstname = raw{x,1};
          lastname = raw{x,2};
      end
  end

%If the code cannot find the month in book 1 data, then it will display a
%statement letting user know that the name was not found.
%The code will also ask user to submit a last name, so the code can
%reattempt to find the name again.
if(repQP == 0)
    disp('ERROR! The month was not found');
end

%Displaying all first and last names with that birthday month
fprintf ('People who have birthdays in %s are:\n%s %s\n', monthcheck, firstname, lastname);

[Walter Roberson]

Your code

      if(repQP == 0)
          x = x + 1;
          firstname = raw{x,1};
          lastname = raw{x,2};
      end

is overwriting all of firstname and lastname, so by the time you reach the end, there is only one name to print.

You should set a flag such as

have_printed_header = false;

and then as soon as you detect a match you can do

if ~have_printed_header
   fprintf('People who have birthdays in %s are:\n', monthcheck);
    have_printed_header = true;
end
fprintf('%s %s\n', firstname, lastname);

Your code looks pretty inefficient, I have to say.

mask = strcmp({employees(i).monthcheck}, monthcheck);
selected_employees = employees(mask);
if ~isempty(selected_employees)
  fprintf('People who have birthdays in %s are:\n', monthcheck);
  for K = 1 : length(selected_employees)
     fprintf('%s %s\n', selected_employees(K).firstname, selected_employees(K).lastname);
  end
end

[Joshua Denton]

Where should these go in the code I am not sure. Also what does the "mask" that you use in the last part of the code? To show how much we didn't learn about csv. Yeah sorry about my code, like I said earlier my class was super basic and didn't really cover csv files.

[Walter Roberson]

The code would replace pretty much everything after you had read in the file and store it into your employees structure.

The variable mask would be a logical vector, and the code is jus using logical indexing. See https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/math/matrix-indexing.html#bq7egb6-1