Finding cells with specific string in cell array and substituting them

In a cell array named CC I search for a specific string, ' -' and I want to substitute the contents of all those cells with something else, e.g. '0'. When I perform the search using

[ii jj]=find(strncmpi(CC,' -',2))

I get the resulots in the form:

ii= 1
    2 
    3  
    4
    8

and 
jj= 12 
    12
    12
    15
    15

Now: how can I change the elements containg that string and having indexes ii & jj with '0'? I tried different form but cannot find a way to refer to elements of CC having ii & jj as row and column number.

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

You can simply use strrep to replace strings in a cell array:

CC = {'A',' -','B',' -','C'}
CCout = strrep(CC,' -', '0')

[Saeid]

Thanks Jos,

what you suggested seems like a very fast solution, but MATLAB gave me the error message:

Cell elements must be character vectors.

when I tried it.

My data is based on excel input of the cell type but somewhere in the original excel file there are some blank columns that have been replaced with a ' -' string in the original format (see picture below) and whnever I want to turn the entire dataset to a numerical array using cell2mat then I see the error message that data types should be the same.

[Jos (10584)]

Ah, your cell is a mixture of strings and numbers ...

CC(strcmpi(CC,' -')) = {0}

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

Using find is not required, and just makes it much more complex. All you need is to use logical indexing:

idx = strncmpi(CC,' -',2);
CC(idx) = {'0'};

[Saeid]

Thanks Stepehen, but in the output forat the result still looks like '0' and not [0], and I still get an error trying to turn the whole thing to a numerical array.

cell2mat(CC)
Error using cell2mat (line 45)
All contents of the input cell array must be of the same data type.

[Saeid]

Nevermind, I guess I just had to replace {'0'} with {[0]}!!! Thanks anayway!

[Stephen23]

Putting a scalar numeric into square brackets is pointless. All you need is simply {0}.

[Saeid]

Thanks Stepehn, I changed that!