How to Convert a column with Char in Cell matrice to Number?

• I have a cell array:

A =

'Time'    'Name'    'Location'    'Duration'    'Remarks'
'100'    'John'        'Abc'        '1000'      'Nill'
'101'    'Tim'         'Def'        '1000'      'Nill'
'102'    'Tom'         'Ghi'        '2000'      'Nill'
'103'    'Jim'         'Jkl'        '4500'      'Nill'

Here I want to convert A(2:4, 1), and A(2:4, 4) to numbers and save to same matrice A.

I can do this using a LOOP and STR2DOUBLE(), but it is very time consuming when the matrice is very large.

Is there any method to convert a range of char-values in a cell matrice to to numbers?

I am looking for someting like:

A(2:4,  1) = str2double( A(2:4,  1) )      %This command is not working
A(2:4,  4) = str2double( A(2:4,  4) )      %This command is not working

• Output should look like:

A =

'Time'    'Name'    'Location'    'Duration'    'Remarks'
100      'John'        'Abc'        1000          'Nill'
101      'Tim'         'Def'        1000          'Nill'
102      'Tom'         'Ghi'        2000          'Nill'
103      'Jim'         'Jkl'        4500          'Nill'

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

You almost got it right, you just need to split the numeric array into a cell array so that it can be allocated back to the cell array A:

A(2:4,1) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,1))) 
A(2:4,4) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,4)))

Or simply on one line:

A(2:4,[1,4]) = num2cell(str2double(A(2:4,[1,4])))

[Vyshakh Pv]

actually.....

for i = first : last
    mat{i, col} = str2double(mat{i, col});
end

is faster than ....

mat(first:end, col) = num2cell(str2double(mat(first:end, col)));

Answer 2

[KSSV]

A = {'Time'    'Name'    'Location'    'Duration'    'Remarks'
'100'    'John'        'Abc'        '1000'      'Nill'
'101'    'Tim'         'Def'        '1000'      'Nill'
'102'    'Tom'         'Ghi'        '2000'      'Nill'
'103'    'Jim'         'Jkl'        '4500'      'Nill'}  ;



T = cell2table(A(2:end,:),'VariableNames',A(1,:)) ; 
T.(1) = cell2mat(T.(1)) ; 
T.(4) = cell2mat(T.(4)) ;
T