extracting first letter from the cell

hello,

I have two cell arrays: nam1 = {'John', 'Adam', 'Emma'} nam2 = {'Doe', 'Willson', 'Brown'}

I want to create one array with initials, like this: init = {'JD', 'AW', EB'}

I tried extracting first letters from each array like this:

if true
  % code
end
ininam1 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam1,'un',0)
ininam2 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam2,'un',0)

but this already fails (Index exceeds array bounds). Can you help me with this? Also combining these two arrays together?

Thanks in advance!

K.

[Stephen23]

It worked fine when I tried it:

>> nam1 = {'John', 'Adam', 'Emma'};
>> nam2 = {'Doe', 'Willson', 'Brown'};
>> ininam1 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam1,'un',0)
ininam1 =    'J'    'A'    'E'
>> ininam2 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam2,'un',0)
ininam2 =    'D'    'W'    'B'

[Kyle Pastor]

I had the same issue. Turns out one of the elements of my cell arrays was an empty string.

A = {'Works','OK_DOKIE',''};

element 3 will cause the fail!

-K

Answer 1

[Kevin Chng]

Hi,

nam1 = {'John', 'Adam', 'Emma'} ;
nam2 = {'Doe', 'Willson', 'Brown'};

ininam1 = strcat(nam1{1}(1),nam2{1}(1))

[Kevin Chng]

or

ininam1 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam1,'un',0)
ininam2 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam2,'un',0)
name=strcat(ininam1,ininam2)

[KDRA]

This gives me only 'JD' and the rest disappears..

[Kevin Chng]

It will return all the combination in name

nam1 = {'John', 'Adam', 'Emma'} ;
nam2 = {'Doe', 'Willson', 'Brown'};
ininam1 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam1,'un',0);
ininam2 = cellfun (@(x) x(1),nam2,'un',0);
name=strcat(ininam1,ininam2);

Answer 2

[Adam]

res = cellfun( @(x,y) [x(1) y(1)], nam1, nam2, 'UniformOutput', false' )

works fine for me on your example, but then so does your own code. Do you have an actual example where it leads to an error?

[KDRA]

while using this solution I get an error 'All of the input arguments must be of the same size and shape. Previous inputs had size 3 in dimension 1. Input #3 has size 1'. I am actually accessing a structure in the loop, so maybe that's the reason why it flips?

if true
  % code
end
nam1 = cell(mfiles,1);
for gg = 1:mfiles
  nam1{gg} = s{gg}.SaData.ClientInfo.FirstName.Text;
  nam2{gg} = s{gg}.SaData.ClientInfo.LastName.Text;
end
res = cellfun( @(x,y) [x(1) y(1)], nam1, nam2, 'UniformOutput', false' )

[Adam]

Well, the problem certainly appears to be with your inputs, but I don't know from that exactly what the inputs look like. The example you gave works fine and I would imagine any pair of cell arrays of equal length, each of which have names of at least 1 letter in them would work. If you have empty cells or if nam1 and nam2 are not the same length then it won't work.

What do nam1 and nam2 look like in a real case that fails? Giving a simplified example in a question is useful, but only if it replicates the problem you are having for the question you ask!

[KDRA]

I literally have 3 names and 3 family names, I just changed them to fake names. They indeed have the same length and they are not empty so in a nutshell, is exactly the same as my simple example.

with this:

if true
  % code
end
ininam1 = cellfun (@(x) x(1:1),nam1,'un',0);
 ininam2 = (cellfun (@(x) x(1:1),nam2,'un',0)).';

I managed to extract first letters from both arrays and combine tohether with this line: name=strcat(ininam1,ininam2); Still not sure why your solution did not work...