Populate a table (or concatenate a cell array) with various data types

Hi there!

I am stuck with a problem. I would like to display various kind of data into a table in the App Designer. I know I have to put all the data in a cell-array, but I always have multiple errors and I can't do properly the conversions.

For instance, let's say

A = {} % The cell array that contains the data of my table 
B = [1 2 3;
     4 5 6]
C = {'blabla', 5;
     B       , struct}

My goal at the end is to obtain

 A = {'B'          , ''           , '' ; % Name of B, I know I can get it by a little function using inputName()
      1            , 2            , 3  ;
      4            , 5            , 6  ;
      ''           , ''           , '' ; % A blank row for readability
      'C'          , ''           , '' ;
      'blabla'     , 5            , '' ;
      '2x3 double' , '1x1 struct' , '' } % We cannot print these kind of value in one single table cell, so we just indicate their class and size

I suppose I have to use functions such as reshape(), num2cell(), and use A = [A ; {...}] to concatenate my data, and this one induces more problems such as: how to resize in order to match dimensions...

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 1

[A. Sawas]

Try this function which will prety much do the job for you. You may optimize it to preallocate A as well.

function A = cell_format(varargin)
    N = length(varargin);
    m = max(cellfun(@(x)size(x,2),varargin));
    A = cell(0,m);
    for i=1:N
        v = varargin{i};
        [r,c] = size(v);
        B = cell(r+1, m);
        B{1,1} = inputname(i);
        B(1,2:end) = {''};
        if isnumeric(v)
            B(2:end,1:c) = num2cell(v);
        elseif iscell(v)
            B(2:end,1:c) = v;
        end
        if(i>1)
            A(end+1,:) = {''};
        end
        A = [A;B];
    end
end

You will call it like this:

cell_format(B,C); % put the list of your variables in the function arguments

[Guillaume Migeon]

It helped me a lot, thank you very much!

[A. Sawas]

My pleasure :)