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matlabcellcell-array

How to find the common elements of 2 cell arrays that contain randperm elements?

I have two cell arrays which may not be of the same size. Elements of cell arrays is randperm of an integer number. randperm data Type is double array. How can I find common elements of two cell arrays?

For example: 

Q1 = {[1 2 3 4], [3 2 4 1], [4 2 1 3]}
Q2 = {[2 4 3 1], [1 2 3 4], [1 2 4 3]}

As I said elements of cell arrays are randperm. I want the output of above example be "Element-1 of Q1 i.e. [1 2 3 4] since it is also present in Q2. Note: Cell Arrays may have different number of columns...

Solution

  • Vertically concatenate the matrices inside the cell arrays and use intersect with the 'rows' flag. i.e.

    Q1={[1 2 3 4], [3 2 4 1], [4 2 1 3]}; 
Q2={[2 4 3 1], [1 2 3 4], [1 2 4 3]};
Qout = intersect(vertcat(Q1{:}), vertcat(Q2{:}), 'rows');

%>> Qout
%Qout =
%     1     2     3     4