Question

Is it possible in matlab to check if a value is empty and if it is empty assign a value, else (if it is not empty) increment the value during an assignment ?

For example:

In this code I increment majorityList{l}, though at the start this cell is empty (not 0), therefore i can’t increment it. This means I need to check this first before I can increment it. Can this be done during the assignment itself ?

 majorityList{l,2} = 'test'; 
 majorityList{l}=  majorityList{l}+1; 

A solution I wrote is:

if length(majorityList{l})==0 
     majorityList{l} = 0;
     majorityList{l} = majorityList{l} +1;
else
    majorityList{l} = majorityList{l} +1; 
 end

though this looks rather ugly for something so easy…

Answer 1

Use isempty for that

if ~isempty(var)
   var=var+1;
end

If on the other hand you do not know, if the variable exists at all, use exist.