check cell's contents and convert to matrix

i have a data cell as below:

<http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=33ylu1z&s=7>

when i use

param1=cell2mat(data(:,2));

param2=cell2mat(data(:,6));

param3=cell2mat(data(:,7));

it gives error:

??? Error using ==> cell2mat at 47

All contents of the input cell array must be of the same data type.

So, every time there is a string in cell matrix MATLAB Gives error and i correct it by hand.

Is there a method that makes this:

param1=cell2mat(data(:,2));

If one of the members of cell is string, than assign that to value of zero??

Thank you very much

[Jan]

I do not see a picture at the shown link.

An example could be helpful, e.g. {1,2,3,'String'} ?

[Walter Roberson]

I didn't either at first, but then realized it was the table towards the top right.

[Jan]

I tried it again without success. I see some GUI objects, "Images You'll also enjoy", some Tools on the left bottom. After I hit the "Next" button, a picture of a male human appeared in frontal plane - without cloths. I'm not sure if this should encourage me to disable the NoScript filter...

I do not find a table and I do think that TinyPic is junk.

[Walter Roberson]

For me it appears in the section underneath "click to add tags". I had to temporarily allow tinypic.com but I did not have to allow any of the other sites the page wants (photobucket, gigya, z25, or others.)

http://oi56.tinypic.com/33ylu1z.jpg

should be the direct link.

[Jan]

Thanks Walter! Following your link I can see the table without any tricks. This is another argument to host pictures on a Mathworks server.

Answer 1

[Laura Proctor]

The following code will find any strings in your input data and replace them with NaN values then converts the cell array to a matrix. You can use any value to replace the strings... it's just that NaN may be appropriate for this case.

c = { 1; 2 ; 3 ; 'aa ' ; 4 ; 10 ; '  '};
ival = cellfun(@ischar,c)
c(ival) = {NaN}
b = cell2mat(c)

[Jan]

The OP asked for zeros explicitely. CELLFUN(@ischar, C) and CELLFUN('isclass', C, 'char') is equivalent.

Answer 2

[Jan]

data(cellfun('isclass', data, 'char')) = {0}

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

param1 = cellfun(@(c) isnumeric(c) * c(1),data(:,2))

[Walter Roberson]

Note: this also does the conversion from cell to array.

Answer 4

[Andrei Bobrov]

idx = find(cellfun('isclass',data,'char'));
data(idx) = data(idx-1)

[Walter Roberson]

Close, but that won't work if there are several strings in a row.

Answer 5

[ben harper]

Thank you for answers.. What if i try to change the string cell to the prvious cell's value, not zero??

I mean

for i=1:size(data,1)

if data(i,2) is string

data(i,2)=data(i-1,2)

end

end

convert column to array with cell2mat

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Like this picture:

image link

Answer 6

[ben harper]

I wrote a solution as below: Can you recommend me if you know a shorter solution. Because in my code i must do this multiple times. Thank you all.

    indices=cellfun('isclass', data(:,2), 'char');
    for i=1:size(indices,1)
        if indices(i)==1
            if i>1
                data(i,2)=data(i-1,2);
            elseif i==1
                data(i,2)=data(i+1,2);
            end
        end
    end
    data_new=cell2mat(data(:,2));

Answer 7

[Laura Proctor]

Are you guaranteed that there will not be two adjacent string values in the input matrix?

If so, then this should work for you:

if indices(1)
  data(1,2) = data(2,2);
  indices(1) = 0;
end

data(indices) = data([indices(2:end) 0]);