Check if cell contains only certain combination of variables

I have a 4x1 cell filled with 4 possible string values: 'A', 'B', 'C', or 'D'

I would like to ensure that the values in there either:

any combination of: 'A' and/or 'B'

OR

any combination of 'C' and/or 'C'

But I want to raise an error if there is any mix between say A and C, or A and D, and so forth

[Turlough Hughes]

Are there 4 letters in each cell or just one? Can you give an example of the cell array?

[Metin Akyol]

So when I print out the cell, I get this output:

example_Cell = 4x1 cell

'A'

'B'

'C'

'A'

[Metin Akyol]

So the above example, would thus be an invalid one based on my criterion, so this should raise a flag.

Answer 1

[Turlough Hughes]

You can do this with an "exclusive or" (see xor) where you check that you have exlusively either 'A' or 'B' xor 'C' or 'D', but not a mix of A and C or A and D, etc. See the following:

x = {'A','B','C','D'}.';

% conditions
condA = any(matches(x,"A"|"B"));
condB = any(matches(x,"C"|"D"));

assert(xor(condA,condB),'Error: ...')

[Metin Akyol]

Fantastic, thank you so much. That's it.

Answer 2

[Benjamin Thompson]

So something like this? I am sure you can add more detail to deal with all possible cases.

myCellArray{1} = 'A';

myCellArray{2} = 'B';

myCellArray{3} = 'C';

myCellArray{4} = 'D';

if (myCellArray{1} == 'A')

for (i = 2:4)

if ((myCellArray{i} == 'C') || (myCellArray{i} == 'D'))

disp('Not Good')

end

end

end

[Metin Akyol]

Yep, that is kind of how I did it too. Thank you so much.