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matlabcell-array

Find max number in cell array of Strings (MATLAB)

If I have a cell array M that consist of strings (some of them are strings contain words, other contain numbers)

M={'r' '2'  '17'
   '2' 's'  '15'
   '5' '10' 'rr'
   }

How can I get the maximum number in second column, so the answer will be 10 ?

Solution

  • Use the fact that str2double converts non-numeric strings to NaN, which max() ignores by default: 

    mx = max( str2double(M(:,2)) )

    To compute the mean, MATLAB's default behavior is to include NaN, so you'll have to tell it to behave otherwise: 

    mn = mean( str2double(M(:,2)), 'omitnan')