find unique words in a 54x1 cell array

I have a cell array of the states used in a data collection. Some of the states are used more than once. I need to find how mant unique states were used in the collection. I have tried to use unique but the I can't seem to get it to work due to the cells being letters not numerical characters.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

states = {'red', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'cyan', 'blue', 'yellow', 'green', 'orange'}

states = 1×9 cell array
    {'red'}    {'yellow'}    {'green'}    {'blue'}    {'cyan'}    {'blue'}    {'yellow'}    {'green'}    {'orange'}

unique(states)

ans = 1×6 cell array
    {'blue'}    {'cyan'}    {'green'}    {'orange'}    {'red'}    {'yellow'}

length(ans)

ans = 6

[Michael Grubb]

So the data was extracted from a Excel graph and is a 54 line column. Unique(states) doesnt work because they are not a string? I don't know how to transform a 54 line column into the form you wrote.

[Walter Roberson]

{'red', 'yellow'} and so on is not a string, it is a cell array of character vectors. You can do the same thing with string objects, though.

states = string({'red', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'cyan', 'blue', 'yellow', 'green', 'orange'})

states = 1×9 string array
    "red"    "yellow"    "green"    "blue"    "cyan"    "blue"    "yellow"    "green"    "orange"

unique(states)

ans = 1×6 string array
    "blue"    "cyan"    "green"    "orange"    "red"    "yellow"

length(ans)

ans = 6

[Walter Roberson]

Is it possible that you have a cell array of numeric scalar values? If so then use cell2mat() to convert into a numeric array that you can then unique()

[Michael Grubb]

I got an error

CELL2MAT does not support cell arrays containing cell arrays or objects.

[Michael Grubb]

When I copy the "states" file it is written as ["AL"; "AZ";...etc... "WY"]

Is there a way to transform this into {'Al', 'Az', ...etc... 'WY'}?

[Walter Roberson]

["AL"; "AZ";...etc... "WY"]

That is not a cell array, that is a string() array, and unique() would work fine on it.

Is it possible that you have a cell array, and inside the cell array you have scalar string objects?

states = {"red", "yellow", "green", "blue", "cyan", "blue", "yellow", "green", "orange"}

states = 1×9 cell array
    {["red"]}    {["yellow"]}    {["green"]}    {["blue"]}    {["cyan"]}    {["blue"]}    {["yellow"]}    {["green"]}    {["orange"]}

unique(vertcat(states{:}))

ans = 6×1 string array
    "blue"
    "cyan"
    "green"
    "orange"
    "red"
    "yellow"

length(ans)

ans = 6