Assign value in a cell with a "oneliner"

Hello Matlab folks,

I am trying to retrieve a cell and change some of its values with only one command line.

I have today :

>> x = {'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'};
>> x{2} = 'y';x{4} = 'z';

I am looking for something like:

>> UnknownFunction({'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'},2,'x',4,'z');

And because it is not funny otherwise, I can't create an UnknownFunction.m myself as I need to use only native Matlab function.

Any Idea ?

Thanks

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

[x{2},x{4}]=deal('x','z')

[Florian Levy]

Thanks madhan, but this supposes that x exists as a variable, and this is what I am trying to avoid.

Actually, in my use case (industrial file I can't share), I am trying to directly access an element of a cell without having an existing associated variable.

Ideally, I want to do something as follow

{'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'}(2)

in order to get the second element of the cell.

BUt this syntax doesn't work in Matlab.

[dpb]

I believe this is the first time I've ever seen deal actually solve the requested problem...

[madhan ravi]

Thanks dpb , I thought so too until the OP commented xd:

subsref({'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'},substruct('{}',{2}))
% or you can use the below ones if the user made anonymous function is allowed
retriever = @(x,y) x(y); 
%                   ^_^  - use {} if you want
retriever({'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'},2)

[Florian Levy]

I actually just found the function that suits my need.

getcolumn({'a';'b';'c';'d';'e'}',[2 4])

Thanks.