Within a cell array, how can I look for cells that contain a certain element, in addition to other elements I am not looking for?

For example, let's say I have a cell array:

Z={'abcde','atg';'va','rem';5,'a'}.

I want to find the positions (x,y) of all the cells that contain the letter 'a', among other letters that are in the same cell as well (I don't want to split the cell into 1 letter cells and then use strcmp).

Thanks

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Do you really have a numeric value in one of the cell of your cell array?

Anyway, strfind is the function you want

%only deal with strings 
zwithonlystrings = Z(cellfun(@ischar, Z));
aposition = strfind(zwithonlystrings, 'a');

%if you want the result, the same shape as z:
aposinz = cell(size(Z));
aposinz(cellfun(@ischar, Z)) = aposition

[Iddo Weiner]

Thank you, the code works well. Yeah, I really do have some numeric values in random cells throughout the array. Just wanted to ask, the output I receive is the following:

aposinz =

    [1]    [1]
    [2]     []
     []    [1]

what is the meaning of the 2 (in cell 2,1)?

thanks again..

[Iddo Weiner]

OK just figured it out - the number is the position of 'a' within the cell.. Thanks for the help!

[Guillaume]

Yes, and if you have several a in the strings, you'll get an array of all their position in the cell.