Question

I have two cell arrays, which are mixed string/integer type, e.g.:

a={'a';1;'b'}
b={'b';1}

I need to compare them and find the index in A of the elements in B. So, in this case it would be 3 and 2 (because ‘b’ is in the 3rd spot in A).

I would do find(strcmpi(b,a)) but I would have to convert both cell arrays to string arrays first, and that would not be very effecient (as both arrays are very long).

I’ve considered setxor, and ismember but I haven’t figured out how to use them for this.

What is the ‘matlab’ way for a problem like this?

Answer 1

use a loop, or wrap it together using arrayfun:

a={'a';1;'b'}
b={'b';1}
result = arrayfun(@(x) find(arrayfun(@(y) isequal(x,y),a),1,'first'),b)