Cell arrays in MATLAB

I know what a cell array is. I just came to the following line: cell_array = cell([], 1);

What does that mean? How can we read the above line?

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

That means you an empty cell

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

The only difference between a={} and b=cell([],10) is their sizes, both do not pre-allocate memory

% size(a)= [0 0]
% size(b)= [0 10]

Answer 2

[Caroline]

The cell function creates a cell array. There are multiple ways to use it. In this case it would create an empty cell array. If you typed the following line into the MATLAB command window:

cell_array = cell([], 1);

it would return the following:

cell_array =

   Empty cell array: 0-by-1

Answer 3

[per isakson]

Create an empty column cell array

    >>  cell_array = cell([], 1);
    >> whos
      Name            Size            Bytes  Class    Attributes
      cell_array      0x1                 0  cell

which might be useful in a loop, in which you may concatenate a column cell array but not a row cell array

    >> cell_array = cat( 1, cell_array, {'a';'b'} )
    cell_array = 
        'a'
        'b'
    >> cell_array = cell([], 1);
    >> cell_array = cat( 1, cell_array, {'a','b'} )
    Error using cat
    Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent.

Equivalent to cell_array = cell(0,1);