Extracting strings in a cell array that contain certain characters

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I have a large cell array (size undefined/changes) with each cell containing a string of five letters (words). I am trying to extract all the strings in the cell array that contain certain letters (number of letters and which letters chagnes/undefined).
For example:
words =
{'gamer'}
{'macho'}
{'mages'}
{'grail'}
letters =
'a'
'm'
'g'
and I'm trying to isolate
'gamer' and 'mages' because they contain all three letters.
The number of words in the cell array changes and the number of letters in the variable letters changes as well. Does anyone know how to go about this? I am struggling using the contains function without hard coding it. Thank you so much!

Answers (2)

KSSV
KSSV on 29 Mar 2022
Edited: KSSV on 29 Mar 2022
There woul dbe definitely better optimal way then this.
str = [{'gamer'}
{'macho'}
{'mages'}
{'grail'}] ;
letters = {'a' 'm' 'g'} ;
str = reshape(cellstr([str{:}]'),5,[])' ; % there could be another optimal way for this
[c,ia] = ismember(str,letters,'row') ;
Warning: The 'rows' input is not supported for cell array inputs.
sum(c,2) % this gives the total number of letters present in each word
ans = 4×1
3 2 3 2
  1 Comment
Janani Guru
Janani Guru on 29 Mar 2022
I'm sorry I'm not very proficient in Matlab so pardon the poor question, but what am I supposed to do with the logical matrix c?

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Stephen23
Stephen23 on 29 Mar 2022
W = {'gamer';'macho';'mages';'grail'};
L = 'amg';
X = cellfun(@(w)all(ismember(L,w)),W);
Z = W(X)
Z = 2×1 cell array
{'gamer'} {'mages'}

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