Adding a categorical column to a Table

Dear All,

I've been stucked with a fairly simple problem for a couple of hours now. I'd like to know how to add a new categorical column to a table in which:

1) from cell 1 to 68 I want to add a string value called 'v';

2) from 69 to 100 I want to add a string value called 'a';

3) from 101 to 155 I want to add a string value called 'i'

Is there an easy way to write that? cause I could do it manually, but I'd like to know the right way to do it when working with tables (or arrays also).

This is what I was trying to do:

>> tabPC = table(PC1, PC2, PC3);      %this is a 155x3 table
>>   tabPC.Var4{1,1} = 'v';
>>   tabPC.Var4{69} = 'a';
>>   tabPC.Var4{101} = 'i';
>> tabPC.Properties.VariableNames{4} = 'mycategories';
>> tabPC.mycategories = categorical(tabPC.mycategories)

This code just added a new 4th column to the original table (named 'mycategories' ) with 'v', 'a' and 'i' strings into the 1th, 69th and 101th cell positions respectively. But these values don't repeat in each cell. E.g I would like the 'v' value to show from cell 1 to cell 68, but it appears only in the first cell. As well as for the other values.

Thanks in advance for your precious help!

Answer 1

[Sindar]

In one line:

mytable.mycategories = categorical(repelem({'v';'a';'i'},[68,32,55]));

To explain:

Matlab will add a column if you define a new variable. This saves you renaming it.

repelem takes your collection of possible categories and repeats each element according to the vector in the 2nd input (so, 68 'v's, 32 'a's, 55 'i's)

Note: swapping the order of converting to categorical and repeating elements may be faster; I don't know:

mytable.mycategories = repelem(categorical({'v';'a';'i'}),[68,32,55]);

[Amanda]

Thank you for the fast reply! That solved my issue.

[Peter Perkins]

In this case it doesn't make much difference, but Sindar is right: for cases with large amounts of data, putting the repelem outside the categorical construction would be better, memorywise.