Using readxls alldata option

Hi,

I am using the readxls to import data into Matlab, the third output of which reads alldata - a subset of my data is as follows -

    [332]
    [320]
    [319]
    'ER4'
    [744]
    [319]
    [319]
    [772]
    [320]
    [763]
    [734]
    [320]
    [763]
    [744]
    '74Y'
    '77W'
    [772]
    '77W'
    [346]
    [380]

Some entries are double and some strings - I would like the data to be all in the same format (ideally a cell array of strings so I can use the unique function) however I am having some trouble. Does anyone know a way of achieving this?

Many thanks

Jack

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

You could try using cellfun to convert each element of your cell array (the alldata from above) to a string, though I suppose the performance of using this function would depend upon the size of your array. For example,

 S = { [332]
       [320]
       [319]
       'ER4'
       [744]
       [319]
       [319]
       [772]
       [320]
       [763]
       [734]
       [320]
       [763]
       [744]
       '74Y'
       '77W'
       [772]
       '77W'
       [346]
       [380] };

will create the cell array of numbers and strings. We could then apply the following which will convert each element from a number to a string

 V = cellfun(@(x)num2str(x),S,'UniformOutput',false);

Note that for those elements of S that are already strings, then num2str has no effect on that element, and so returns the identical string value. In our case, V becomes

 V = 

    '332'
    '320'
    '319'
    'ER4'
    '744'
    '319'
    '319'
    '772'
    '320'
    '763'
    '734'
    '320'
    '763'
    '744'
    '74Y'
    '77W'
    '772'
    '77W'
    '346'
    '380'

and you should be able to apply the unique function to get

 unique(V)

 ans = 

    '319'
    '320'
    '332'
    '346'
    '380'
    '734'
    '744'
    '74Y'
    '763'
    '772'
    '77W'
    'ER4'

Try the above and see what happens!

[jnaumann]

works perfectly thanks