Find cell containing part of a string

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KAE
KAE on 26 Oct 2017
Commented: KAE on 27 Oct 2017
I would like to find the elements of a cell array that contain part of a specified string.
colorList = {'Red', 'Green', 'Blue', 'Purple'}; % List of values to match with
stringToCheck = 'Blue 23948723'; % String we are trying to match
I would like to return index=3 of colorList since that entry contains the stringToCheck text of 'Blue'. How can I do this?

Accepted Answer

Cedric
Cedric on 26 Oct 2017
Edited: Cedric on 26 Oct 2017
If you cannot assume that keywords are separated by white spaces:
>> find(cellfun(@(x)~isempty(strfind(stringToCheck,x)), colorList))
ans =
3
  2 Comments
KAE
KAE on 26 Oct 2017
Edited: KAE on 26 Oct 2017
They may not be, I hadn't thought of that so thanks.

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More Answers (2)

per isakson
per isakson on 26 Oct 2017
Edited: per isakson on 26 Oct 2017
>> find( ismember( colorList, strsplit( stringToCheck ) ) )
ans =
3
or
>> find( ismember( colorList, strsplit( stringToCheck, {'\s','\.',','} ...
, 'CollapseDelimiters',true, 'DelimiterType','RegularExpression' ) ) )
ans =
3
if the color name is followed by a period or comma, e.g. "Blue.". And what about upper and lower case, e.g "blue"? And "Bluetooth"?
  1 Comment
KAE
KAE on 26 Oct 2017
Thank you, this works and your scenarios are useful too.

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Akira Agata
Akira Agata on 26 Oct 2017
If your MATLAB is R2016b or later version, you can use contains function, like:
idx = cellfun(@(x) contains(stringToCheck,x),colorList);
The answer is:
>> colorList(idx)
ans =
{'Blue'}
  1 Comment
KAE
KAE on 27 Oct 2017
Thank you, this syntax is easier to read and thus remember than then other ones.

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