extract and split data from cell into multiple cells.

So what I want to achieve is this:

I have a 1x3 cell of the form (date , hour, name):

so myCell has 3 100x1 cells;

ex : myCell (100x1 cell, 100x1 cell,100x1 cell):

07.03.2019 20:30 a

07.03.2019 20:31 b

07.03.2019 20:32 c

07.03.2019 20:33 a

07.03.2019 20:33 b

07.03.2019 20:34 c

07.03.2019 20:34 b

07.03.2019 20:35 c

07.03.2019 20:35 a

07.03.2019 20:36 c

I want to separate all my data from myCell into 3 diffrent cells each containing a or b or c;

ex:

myNewCellA:

07.03.2019 20:30 a

07.03.2019 20:33 a

07.03.2019 20:35 a

...

... myNewCellB with b, and myNewCellC with c;

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

One approach:

C = {'07.03.2019 20:30' 'a'
     '07.03.2019 20:31' 'b'
     '07.03.2019 20:32' 'c'
     '07.03.2019 20:33' 'a'
     '07.03.2019 20:33' 'b'
     '07.03.2019 20:34' 'c'
     '07.03.2019 20:34' 'b'
     '07.03.2019 20:35' 'c'
     '07.03.2019 20:35' 'a'
     '07.03.2019 20:36' 'c'};

[U2,~,ix] = unique(C(:,2),'stable');
myNewCell = splitapply(@(x){x}, C, ix);
myNewCellA = myNewCell{1}                                     % Assign The Others Similarly, If You Want To

producing:

myNewCellA =

  3×2 cell array

    {'07.03.2019 20:30'}    {'a'}
    {'07.03.2019 20:33'}    {'a'}
    {'07.03.2019 20:35'}    {'a'}

You can always assign them as ‘myNewCellA’ and similarly for the rest, however that is ineffecient and makes it difficult to iterate through them. I would just refer to them as ‘myNewCell{1}’, ‘myNewCell{2}’, ...

[rnd rnd]

Thank you for the solution,

The problem is I am getting an error:

Error using cell/unique (line 85)
Cell array input must be a cell array of character vectors.

Error in timeDifCalc (line 8)
[U2,~,ix] = unique(c(:,2),'stable');

I think the problem is I have a cell , not a cell array (see photo)

and I have 3 columns , date, hour, a string.

And in the end I also want to have a cell not a cell array, if that is possible.

[Star Strider]

My pleasure.

You have a cell array of cell arrays. You didn’t say that, and you didn’t attach your data, so I did the best I could under those circumstances. The images are new as well, so I didn’t know how to create my ‘C’ cell array.

With those problems solved, and if I guess the structure of your cell array correctly, this works:

C = {{'07.03.2019 20:30 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:31 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:32 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:33 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:33 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:34 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:34 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:35 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:35 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:36 c'}
     
     {'07.03.2019 20:30 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:31 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:32 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:33 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:33 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:34 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:34 b'
     '07.03.2019 20:35 c'
     '07.03.2019 20:35 a'
     '07.03.2019 20:36 c'}};

Cs = split(C{1}, ' ');
DT = join([Cs(:,1),Cs(:,2)]);
DTN = [DT Cs(:,3)];
[U2,~,ix] = unique(DTN(:,2),'stable');
myNewCell = splitapply(@(x){x}, DTN, ix);
myNewCellA = myNewCell{1}                                     % Assign The Others Similarly, If You Want To

The results are as in my original Answer, so I will not repeat them here.

I duplicated the original cell array and reformatted them to create ‘C’ as a (2 x 1) cell array of (10 x 1) cell arrays (again guessing its structure) to be as sure as I can be that I am simulating your data correctly.

Note that the split and join functions were introduced in R2016b, so if you have that or a later release, this will work.

You will need to iterate through the cells arrays in your ‘c’ cell array to use my code with each one. A for loop is best for that.