Using cellfun to extract numbers from strings in a cell array

Hi all,

I currently have the following code which extracts numbers from strings found within a cell array.

Cel = {'1-2-3-4-5-6' '5-6-7-8'} ;
    
fun = @(X) cellfun(@(C) abs(sscanf(C,'%d')), X, 'Un', 0) ;
    
xx = fun(Cel)

This works great. But my problem is that I have a case in my cell array with empty cells, like so:

Cel = {'1-2-3-4-5-6' '5-6-7-8' [] []} ;
    
fun = @(X) cellfun(@(C) abs(sscanf(C,'%d')), X, 'Un', 0) ;
    
xx = fun(Cel)

I would like for the code to return xx = {[1 2 3 4 5 6] [5 6 7 8] [] []}, but obviously since my function does not work with empty cells, I get an error.

So I would like to know what alternatives do I have such that I can accomplish the above?

Answer 1

[Yongjian Feng]

How about this:

Cel = {'1-2-3-4-5-6' '5-6-7-8' [] []} ;
    
xx = cellfun(@(x) foo(x), Cel, 'Un', 0);

function ret = foo(x)
    ret = [];
    if ~isempty(x)
        ret = abs(sscanf(x, "%d"));
    end
end