How to detect row index

Hi, I have the cell array of column as below:

VA
Star
/
:
Status

Star
/
end
:
positive
Status

1
4
12
det
STDEV
/
end
:
finish

Star
/
end
:
positive
Status
:
KLA
STU
end
status

Now, I want to detect the row index of "Star" when below strings appears in consecutive rows.

Star
/
end
:
positive
Status

In this case, 7 (6th row white space)

Answer 1

[Rik]

The code below should do the trick:

a={'VA';'Star';'/';':';'Status';'';'Star';'/';'end';':';'positive';...
    'Status';'';'1';'4';'12';'det';'STDEV';'/';'end';':';'finish';'';...
    'Star';'/';'end';':';'positive';'Status';':';'KLA';'STU';'end';'status'};
b={'Star';'/';'end';':';'positive';'Status'};
[~,index]=ismember(a(:),b(:));
starting_rows=strfind(index',1:length(b));

[Mekala balaji]

How does this works:

starting_rows=strfind(index',1:length(b))

[Rik]

The trick is that ismember finds the positions where elements of b can be found in a. This means that you are looking for the positions in index where a subvector [1 2 3 4 5 6] starts. You can easily do this by pretending the vectors are strings and using strfind. You don't even need a conversion to char (in Octave you might). The transpose is there to convert the column vector to a row vector.

This method requires the elements of b to be unique.