what am I doing wrong with ismember?

I am trying to use ismember to find out whether a member of a cell is present in another cell array of strings. In one script, I did this -

if true
  % code
end
stringyo = {'yo','I','love','you'};
test_stringyo = {'yo','you','look','funny'};
ismember(stringyo,test_stringyo{1})

which works well, gives the array 1 0 0 0, and in another script,

if true
  % code
end
global Tag_sequences; % This is another cell array of strings defined        elsewhere
Tags = {'DD','NN','PP','PN','ADJ','ADV','VB','PNN'};
ismember(Tag_sequences,Tags{1})

But this gives an error : Error using cell/ismember>cellismemberlegacy (line 131) Input A of class cell and input B of class char must be cell arrays of strings, unless one is a string.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

what is Tag_sequences?

[Samyukta Ramnath]

It is a previously defined global cell array of strings containing the elements of Tags in a variable order and with a variable number of elements.

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

I suggest you check whether Tag_sequences is really a cell array of strings [as required by ismember()]. You can do this easily:

>> iscellstr(Tag_sequences)

I am guessing that that returns false.

You can then identify exactly which cell or cells are causing the problem:

>> cellfun(@ischar,Tag_sequences)

[Samyukta Ramnath]

I checked with whos, and the entire thing with Tag_sequences is that I have defined it to be a cell array of strings. It has the elements of tags, but in a variable order and with variable elements. whos Tag_sequences Name Size Bytes Class Attributes

Tag_sequences      1x4               248  cell     global

[Samyukta Ramnath]

Thank you! I got the problem. Tag_sequences gets updated whenever I run the function and the function to update it had an error halfway through, so the cell array was not fully updated. Hence it gave an error. Thank you!

[the cyclist]

From the whos() command, I see that Tag_sequences is a cell array, but that does not mean it is a cell array of strings. Did you try the commands I suggested?

For example, it would be OK if

Tag_sequences = {'a','b','c'};

but it would not be OK if

Tag_sequences = {7,'b','c'};

[Zain ul Aabidin]

Then how to convert Tag_sequences = {7,'b','c'} to Tag_sequences = {'7','b','c'};

[Stephen23]

@Zain ul Aabidin:

>> C = {7,'b','c'};
>> cellfun(@num2str,C,'uni',0)