modifying a cell array

I have a cell array

    A = cell 1: 1,2,5,6 (4x1)
        cell 2: 3, 5.5, 6.4, 3, 7.2 (5x1)
        cell 3: 15 (1x1)
        cell 4: 2, 3.25, 6.35 (3x1)
        cell 5: 2, 13,22 (3x1)

I want to combine any cell with than 3 elements to the cell following it. For example merge cell 3 into cell 4, so the "new" cell 3 consists of 2, 3.25, 6.35, 15.

Thanks

[Guillaume]

What if you have two consecutive cells with only 1 element, should both be merged together and with the 3rd following cell?

Answer 1

[Abhishek GS]

Hi Shobit,

I am assuming you want to know how to modify/combine cell arrays and you already know how to loop through the different cell arrays that you have. This may work for you.

cell3={15} cell4={2,3.25,6.35} if (length(cell3)<3) cell4={cell4{:},cell3{:}} end

Hope this helps,

Abhishek

[Abhishek GS]

Sorry about the formatting. This looks better.

cell3={15}
cell4={2,3.25,6.35}
if (length(cell3)<3)
  cell4={cell4{:},cell3{:}} 
end

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

Here is a vectorised way of doing it. This may or may not be faster than doing it explicitly with a loop:

tooshort = cellfun(@numel, A) < 3;
assert(all(diff(find(tooshort)) > 1), 'Does not work with two consecutive cells being too short')
assert(tooshort(end) == 0, 'Does not work if last element is too short');
tooshort = tooshort(1:end-1);
A([tooshort false]) = cellfun(@horzcat, A([tooshort false]), A([false tooshort]), 'UniformOutput', false); %merge consecutive cells
A([false tooshort]) = []; %and delete the 2nd cells