Thread Subject:

different way of "concatenating" cell arrays

Say I have a couple of Nx1 cell arrays.
c1 = {'James', 'Carl', 'Sarah'}';
c2 = {'Enright', 'Haynes', 'Latham'}';

How can I combine them to create a cell array that looks like this one?
c = {{'James', 'Enright'}, {'Carl', 'Haynes'}, {'Sarah', 'Latham'}}'

Is there a straightforward way to do this without looping? How about if the two cell arrays are NxM and NxK instead of both Nx1?

FWIW, my motivation is that I have a third Nx1 cell array c3, and c1, c2, c3 are all conceptually part of an Nx3 table, and I want to create a map from c3 elements to {c1 element, c2 element} pairs.

c3 = {'2R175', 'B7398', 'A479GY'}';
m = containers.Map(c3, c);
m('B7398')
ans =
    'Carl' 'Haynes'

Thanks.

"Bob S" wrote in message <ig57sp$47s$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Say I have a couple of Nx1 cell arrays.
> c1 = {'James', 'Carl', 'Sarah'}';
> c2 = {'Enright', 'Haynes', 'Latham'}';
>
> How can I combine them to create a cell array that looks like this one?
> c = {{'James', 'Enright'}, {'Carl', 'Haynes'}, {'Sarah', 'Latham'}}'


c = cellfun(@(x,y){x,y},c1,c2,'uni',false)

For the simple case:

c = cellfun(@(a,b) {a, b}, c1, c2, 'UniformOutput', false)

"Bob S" wrote in message <ig57sp$47s$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Say I have a couple of Nx1 cell arrays.
> c1 = {'James', 'Carl', 'Sarah'}';
> c2 = {'Enright', 'Haynes', 'Latham'}';
>
> How can I combine them to create a cell array that looks like this one?
> c = {{'James', 'Enright'}, {'Carl', 'Haynes'}, {'Sarah', 'Latham'}}'
>
> Is there a straightforward way to do this without looping? How about if the two cell arrays are NxM and NxK instead of both Nx1?
>
> FWIW, my motivation is that I have a third Nx1 cell array c3, and c1, c2, c3 are all conceptually part of an Nx3 table, and I want to create a map from c3 elements to {c1 element, c2 element} pairs.
>
> c3 = {'2R175', 'B7398', 'A479GY'}';
> m = containers.Map(c3, c);
> m('B7398')
> ans =
> 'Carl' 'Haynes'
>
> Thanks.

for your example:
 c1 = {'James', 'Carl', 'Sarah'}';
 c2 = {'Enright', 'Haynes', 'Latham'}';

try this:
c3 = cellfun(@(x,y) {x y}, c1,c2, 'Un',0);
answer = c3'

"Bob S" wrote in message <ig57sp$47s$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Say I have a couple of Nx1 cell arrays.
> c1 = {'James', 'Carl', 'Sarah'}';
> c2 = {'Enright', 'Haynes', 'Latham'}';
>
> How can I combine them to create a cell array that looks like this one?
> c = {{'James', 'Enright'}, {'Carl', 'Haynes'}, {'Sarah', 'Latham'}}'
>
> Is there a straightforward way to do this without looping? How about if the two cell arrays are NxM and NxK instead of both Nx1?

 c = num2cell([c1 c2],2)'

Bruno

Thanks, everyone. All three replies gave the same solution, so that's clearly the canonical answer.