strtrim not working for cell array

I have a cell of 472*12 size. I am trying to use strtrim on this cell but I am getting an error which says "Input should be a string or a cell array of strings." Can anyone help me with this?

[Image Analyst]

Probably, if we could see your code. Have you read this yet?

[Geoff Hayes]

Praveen - please describe the contents for this cell array. Are all elements strings or do some include numeric elements? Based on the error message, I am assuming that the latter is true. If that is the case, you will have to apply strtrim to just those elements of the cell array that are strings.

[Praveen Choudhury]

All my elements are of type char. Please see the attached.

[Geoff Hayes]

They appear to be either character strings or are empty [] elements. See Sean's answer below for how to deal with this situation (his code replaces the empty elements with '' strings).

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

[] is not of type char so you are current attempting to use strtrim on non-strings.

Here is a workaround:

new_tableData = cellfun(@(S) strtrim([S '']), tableData, 'Uniform', 0);

The [] of '' has no effect on strings, but has the subtle side effect of converting [] into '' which can be trimmed.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

iscellstr(your_cell)

will definitively tell you if your cell contains only strings. It's also possible that it contains numeric empties [] but otherwise strings. If this is the case the following will fix it.

empties = cellfun(@isempty,your_cell)
your_cell(empties) = {''};

Note you could also create the cell this way to begin with rather than using cell()

your_cell = repmat({''},rows,cols);