How do I specify a variable from a table that uses words and not numerical values

I'm trying to use an if statement to equate to 'Na'. I'm not sure how I would write the variables out. Such as 'orange peel', 'NA', 'wrapper', etc.

Answer 1

[Campion Loong]

I would use a categorical for trashTags.

trash = readtable('Litterati_processed_data.csv');
trash.Tags = categorical(trash.Tags);

Alternatively, it's more memory efficient to directly read the Tags in as categorical (i.e. rather than converting after import). Use ImportOptions and the corresponding detectImportOptions:

% I am guessing your file layout here. Tinker to suit your needs
opts = detectImportOptions('Litterati_processed_data.csv', 'Delimiter', ',');
opts = setvartype(opts,'Tags','categorical'); % directly read "Var1" in as categorical

If your 'NA' actually means 'not applicable', you can read that in as missing value too:

opts = setvaropts(opts, 'Tags', 'TreatAsMissing', 'NA');

Now just read it in with your configured options:

trash = readtable('Litterati_processed_data.csv', opts);

% Just count the number of "NA"
n = nnz(t.Tags == 'NA')

% Or if you had treated "NA" as missing at import
n = nnz(ismissing(t.Tags))

Answer 2

[Geoff Hayes]

Elias - try using strcmp or the case-insensitive strcmpi.