Increase the number of elements inside a cell

Hi. I have this cell:

A = {'5';'11'};
B = {'7';'19'};
out = [A,B]; % cell 2x2

I should go from an 'out' cell 2x2 to an 'out' cell 2x4, where the missing columns (columns 3 and 4) are null cells:

empty_cell = cell(2,1);

The total number of columns in the 'out' cell should be imposed by:

parameter = 4;

So, the end result I want to get must be this:

empty_cell = cell(2,1);
out = [A,B,empty_cell,empty_cell]; % cell becoming 2x4 (where 4 is 'parameter')

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

No loop, no concatenation required:

A = {'5';'11'};
B = {'7';'19'};
out = [A,B]; % cell 2x2
parameter = 4;
out(:,end+1:parameter) = {[]}

out = 2×4 cell array
    {'5' }    {'7' }    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {'11'}    {'19'}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}

Answer 2

[Deep]

You can simply add empty columns in a loop.

Given out and parameter are defined (out can be a cell of any shape, need not be 2x2),

% Calculate the number of empty columns to be added
num_empty_cols = parameter - size(out, 2);

Then, create an empty cell array with the same number of rows as 'out'

empty_cell = cell(size(out, 1), 1);

Finally add these cells in a simple loop:

for k = 1:num_empty_cols
    out = [out, empty_cell];
end

Hope this helps!

[Deep]

You can also directly add a single cell without a loop as Dyuman suggested.