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arraysstringmatlabcellprintf

Print specific parts of a cell as strings in matlab?


I have the following matrix array B :

B=[1 2 3; 10 20 30 ; 100 200 300 ; 500 600 800];

Which through a code is combined to form possible combinations between the values. The results are stored in cell G. Such that G :

G=
[1;20;100;500]
[0;30;0;800]
[3;0;0;600]
.
.
etc

I want to format the results based on which value from B is chosen :

[1 2 3]      = 'a=1 a=2 a=3'
[10 20 30]   = 'b=1 b=2 b=3'
[100 200 300]= 'c=1 c=2 c=3'
[500 600 800]= 'd=1 d=2 d=3'

Example, using the results in the current cell provided :

[1;20;100;500]
[0;30;0;800]
[3;0;0;600]

Should print as

a=1 & b=2 & c=1 & d=1 
a=0 & b=3 & c=0 & d=3  % notice that 0 should be printed although not present in B
a=3 & b=0 & c=0 & d=2

Note that the cell G will vary depending on the code and is not fixed. The code used to generate the results can be viewed here : Need help debugging this code in Matlab


Please let me know if you require more info about this.


Solution

  • You can try this:

    k = 1; % which row of G
    
    string = sprintf('a = %d, b = %d, c = %d, d = %d',...
        max([0 find(B(1,:) == G{k}(1))]),  ...
        max([0 find(B(2,:) == G{k}(2))]),  ...
        max([0 find(B(3,:) == G{k}(3))]),  ...
        max([0 find(B(4,:) == G{k}(4))])  ...
        );
    

    For instance, for k = 1 of your example data this results in

    string =
    
    a = 1, b = 2, c = 1, d = 1
    

    A short explanation of this code (as requested in the comments) is as follows. For the sake of simplicity, the example is limited to the first value of G and the first line of B.

    % searches whether the first element in G can be found in the first row of B
    % if yes, the index is returned
    idx = find(B(1,:) == G{k}(1));
    
    % if the element was not found, the function find returns an empty element. To print  
    % a 0 in these cases, we perform max() as a "bogus" operation on the results of  
    % find() and 0. If idx is empty, it returns 0, if idx is not empty, it returns 
    % the results of find().
    val = max([0 idx])
    
    % this value val is now formatted to a string using sprintf
    string = sprintf('a = %d', val);