Search/Find sub strings in a string

Hello,

I have two cell arrays:

1. The first cell array is a 1x279 cell array which contains components abbreviations like - Ra, Bt, Rag, Rg, Vm, SzF and so on.
2. The second cell array is a 1x439 cell array which contains strings like 'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7' or 'F.y_1T.Ra1.SzF2_N590'

You can see the component abbreviations of the first cell array are in the second cell arrays as a substring / part of the whole string .

1. For example second cell array 'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7' -> Rg -component abbreviation found from the first cell array. (The rest of the string is something else - not important).
2. Second Example: Second cell array F.y_1T.Ra1.SzF2_N590 -> Ra and SzF are found from the the first cell array

So my target is to know which of the 279 component abbreviations are found in the second array? I tried a lot but with no working solution. I forgot my matlab skills cause i dont need very often.

Here is a small part of my code (not working/ not the whole code)

for t=1:size;%279
    for h=1:numCols1%439
        locigal(t,h) = strcmp(Messstelle{1,h}, abbrev_components{1,t})
        %locigal_1{t,h} = strcmp(Messstelle{1,h}, abbrev_components{1,t})
        %locigal{t,h} = strmatch(Messstelle{1,h},abbrev_components{1,t})
    end
end

What is the difference between 'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7'`and "F.y_1T.Rg1_N7" both are cell arrays. How can i convert it?

Thank you

[Stephen23]

"What is the difference between 'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7'`and "F.y_1T.Rg1_N7" both are cell arrays."

• 'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7' is a character vector.
• "F.y_1T.Rg1_N7" is a string scalar.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/characters-and-strings.html

If the text contains Rag, do you want to prevent matching Ra ? If so, how?

[Philipp Mueller]

Thank you for your answer. rag = rag -> ra is in this case false. I want to prevent matching ra.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

This matches abbreviations followed by one digit (thus avoiding the Ra/Rag matching problem):

C = {'Ra','Bt','Rag','Rg','Vm','SzF'};
D = {'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7','F.y_1T.Rag1.SzF2_N590'}; % Ra changed to Rag !
rgx = sprintf('|%s',C{:});
rgx = sprintf('(%s)%s',rgx(2:end),'(?=\d)');
tmp = regexp(D,rgx,'match');
tmp{:}

ans = 1x1 cell array
    {'Rg'}

ans = 1x2 cell array
    {'Rag'}    {'SzF'}

If there can be other characters trailing the abbreviations then adapt the lookahead assertion as required:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/lookahead-assertions-in-regular-expressions.html

After this you can simply do ismember on each cell of tmp:

boo = cellfun(@(c)ismember(C,c),tmp,'uni',0);
boo = vertcat(boo{:})

boo = 2x6 logical array
   0   0   0   1   0   0
   0   0   1   0   0   1

[Philipp Mueller]

Sorry for the late reply. I have mentally reproduced your programming code. But I have one last request: As a result, I would like an array that does not contain any duplicate entries. Certain component abbreviations appear several times often i have seen a 1x2 cell. I just want to have a simple array where are no duplicate entries. I hope you understand what I mean and I want to apologize me for my bad english. Thank you for your active help. Kind regards

[Stephen23]

"I just want to have a simple array where are no duplicate entries."

Each row of array boo contains true to indicate if an abbreviation occurs one or more times in the corresponding string. It does not contain duplicate true values for any one abbreviation.

Please give an example string with duplicate values, and also the expected output.

Answer 2

[Jan]

KeyList    = {'Ra', 'Bt', 'Rag', 'Rg', 'Vm', 'SzF'};
StringList = {'F.y_1T.Rg1_N7', 'F.y_1T.Ra1.SzF2_N590', ...
              'F.y_1T.Rag.SzF2_N590'};
nKey       = numel(KeyList);
nString    = numel(StringList);
L = false(nString, nKey);
for t = 1:nKey
    % Mask other keys:
    exclude = find(contains(KeyList, KeyList{t}));
    exclude(exclude == t) = [];
    S       = StringList;
    for k = exclude
        S = strrep(S, KeyList{k}, '*');
    end
    
    L(:, t) = contains(S, KeyList{t});
    % Matlab < R2016b:
    % L(:, t) = ~strcmp(S, strrep(StringList, KeyList{t}, ''));
end

Now "Rag" is masked, if "Ra" is searched.