Comparing to string vectors

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Inês Mendes
Inês Mendes on 8 Jul 2015
Commented: James Tursa on 8 Jul 2015
Hi guys,
I am having a lot of trouble comparing 2 arrays of strings.
For example, I have:
date = ['12-10-1992';'13-10-1992';'14-10-1992';'15-10-1992'];
date2=['13-10-1992';'14-10-1992'];
I want to compare them and find the position for which date 2 is equal to date.
I tried using find, ismember, intersect..none of them are working and i don´t understand why..
can anyone help please?
I would be much appreciated!
Inês
  2 Comments
James Tursa
James Tursa on 8 Jul 2015
Please verify first what class of variables you have. What is class(date) and class(date2)?
Inês Mendes
Inês Mendes on 8 Jul 2015
they are both cell type..

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Accepted Answer

bmeyer
bmeyer on 8 Jul 2015
hey
The way you are defining your arrays causes them to be stored as type int. For example:
date = [12-10-1992;13-10-1992]; -----> date = [-1990,-1989]
date2 = [13-10-1992;14-10-1992]; -----> date2 = [-1989,-1988]
I suppose in this case, you would get lucky because comparing same "dates" would be comparing the integer values, which would turn out to be the same. However, if you actually want to comparing strings, you should define them like this:
date = ['12-10-1992','13-10-1992'];
date2 = ['13-10-1992','14-10-1992'];
Then
find(date == date2)
will return the indices at which the string values are the same
  1 Comment
Inês Mendes
Inês Mendes on 8 Jul 2015
and if i have arrays with different sizes?

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More Answers (1)

James Tursa
James Tursa on 8 Jul 2015
The intersect function works for me, as long as I start with cell arrays as you have stated. E.g.,
>> date1 = {'12-10-1992';'13-10-1992';'14-10-1992';'15-10-1992'};
>> date2 = {'13-10-1992';'14-10-1992'};
>> [d i1 i2] = intersect(date1,date2)
d =
'13-10-1992'
'14-10-1992'
i1 =
2
3
i2 =
1
2
Can you verify again that you really have cell arrays?
  2 Comments
Inês Mendes
Inês Mendes on 8 Jul 2015
my problem is that i have found examples of dates that are common to both arrays and they didn´t show in the intersect vector d (in your case)
James Tursa
James Tursa on 8 Jul 2015
Examine those exact mismatches in detail. Are they in exactly the same format? Do either of them have leading or trailing blanks? Etc. Once you know the cause of the mismatch and the formats you are working with, you can design code to deal with it.

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