Assign value zero to n elements of cell array

Hi all,

I am declaring a cell array to hold some numeric and non numeric data. I want to set the first row, all columns, equal to the numeric value zero. Something like this:

myCell = cell(5, 500);  
myCell{1,:} = 0;

Which gives the error:

The right hand side of this assignment has too few values to satisfy the left hand side.

I've tried a number of other things, none worked, so have resorted to doing it in a loop. It works, but I really don't like it. Is there a simple way I'm missing?

Cheers, Karl

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

myCell(1,:) = {0}

• Left hand side: use () to keep it as cells not braces for extraction of the content of cells.
• Right handside: make 0 a 1x1 cell so that it can be stuck into all of the cells on the left via scalar expansion

[Karl]

Excellent, thank you Sean. Just when I thought I had exhausted all combinations of brackets :)

Thank you for the concise answer and for explaining the reasoning behind it.

[chris oj]

This answer just helped me...thanks Sean.

[Flavia Aluisi]

This is valid also in the case where I have a cell with 10 columns and 71842 rows and I want to fill with the number one only the rows between 2695 and 2746 of column one?

[Sean de Wolski]

@Flavia something like

myCell(2695:2746, 1) = {1}

Answer 2

[Parna Bhattacharya]

Thanks;

[Benjamin]

This also works:

A =

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

in order to zero the ith row: (i = 1)

A(1,:) = [0]

>> A =

0 0 0

4 5 6

7 8 9

Answer 3

[Jeffery Devereux]

Nice! Thanks (Had the same issue) Never thought about using the curly brackets around the zero.