Need help to search a structure with user I/P

Hi,

I have a data structure (tempExp) that looks like the following:
tempExp.size  --> This is a string
tempExp.color --> This is a string
tempExp.data  --> Usually a 1x2000 double

Right now I ask the user make "size" and "color" selections in a gui popupmenu which I save as string variables called "size" and "color". What I would like to do is use that information to select the appropriate tempExp.data field and eventually use that to make plots, or further processing, etc.

For example, user selects "orange" and "medium". How do I use that information to search the tempExp structure that contains the color "orange" and size "medium" and then access/return the corresponding tempExp.data for those user selected fields?

Thank you for your time!

[Image Analyst]

DO NOT SAVE IN A VARIABLE CALLED size!!! You can have a structure field called size, but not a whole string variable called "size" or you will blow away the built-in size() function.

[R J]

Duly noted!

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Assuming that tempExp is an array of struct

 sizes = {tempExp(:).size};
 colors = {tempExp(:).color};
 matchstruct = tempExp(strcmp(sizes, size) & strcmp(colors, color));
 if ~isempty(matchstruct)
   data = matchstruct.data; %assume that there is at most one match.
   %do something with data
 end

[R J]

Thank you very much Guillaume! This works and I appreciate your response. Working on this now :)

- RJ

[R J]

Guillame,

Just curious, how would I handle a situation where there is more than one match?

RJ

[Guillaume]

If there is more than one match, then matchstruct will be an array of the structures that match. You can then do whatever you want with this array such as:

for match = 1 : numel(matchstruct)
   data = matchstruct(match).data;
   ...
end

[R J]

Ah, ok I see. This was very helpful. Thank you again!