Find occurrence of a character/number combination input in a Seperate array

in the code, I am trying to ask the user for multiple inputs which is placed into a cell array, than I want to use that array (which has the user inputs) to search the indices of occurence in another cell array, which was an extration of an excel file that (has a title in every 5 columns that the user input is indicative of). Once I locate that indices I plan on usng the values under that column till the next title to do calculations.

for i = 1:1:(width(Engtype)*width(TCValFresh)*TransType)

prompt = {'Add a New Combination?'};

dlgtitle = 'Combination Prompter';

dims = [1 35];

definput = {'No'};

x = inputdlg(prompt,dlgtitle,dims,definput);

no= {'no','NO','No'};

if contains(x,no) == 1

break

else

prompt = {'Enter Engine ID','Enter TC ID','Enter Transmission ID'};

dlgtitle = 'Combination';

dims = [1 80];

definput = {'C4.4 DITAAC 74kW','Sachs W300_306','Cool Transmission'};

ReqCombo = inputdlg(prompt,dlgtitle,dims,definput);

ReqUse = transpose(ReqCombo);

r = r+1;

for c = 1:1:width(ComboStacker)

ComboStacker(r,c) = ReqUse(1,c);

end

end

end

Answer 1

[Suraj Kumar]

Hi Alp,

To find the occurrence of a character or number combination input in a separate array, you can follow these steps.

1. You can store the input in a cell array and then compare it against the data extracted from excel sheet. Now to get data from the user you can use the input dialog box in MATLAB and store the data in a cell array.

You can go through the code below for better understanding:

r = 0; % Row counter for ComboStacker 
ComboStacker = {}; %Empty cell to store the user inputs 
maxIterations = 5; 
for i = 1:maxIterations 
    prompt = {'Add a New Combination?'}; 
    dlgtitle = 'Combination Prompter'; 
    dims = [1 35]; 
    definput = {'No'}; 
    x = inputdlg(prompt, dlgtitle, dims, definput); 
% Check if user inputs more data 
    no = {'no', 'NO', 'No'}; 
    if any(contains(x, no)) 
        break; 
    else 
        % Prompt for new combination details 
        prompt = {'Enter Engine ID', 'Enter TC ID', 'Enter Transmission ID'}; 
        dlgtitle = 'Combination'; 
        dims = [1 80]; 
        definput = {'C4.4 DITAAC 74kW', 'Sachs W300_306', 'Cool Transmission'}; 
        ReqCombo = inputdlg(prompt, dlgtitle, dims, definput); 
% Incrementing the counter and storing the data in the array 
        r = r + 1; 
        ComboStacker(r, :) = ReqCombo'; 
    end 
end 

2. Now to use these stored values and match against the data extracted from an excel sheet you can use “readtable” function to extract the data from the excel sheet and “cellfun” function to compare the values from the stored cell array with the extracted data from excel sheet.

You can refer the below code for better understanding:

% Read data from excel file using readtable 
filename = 'data.xlsx'; 
dataTable = readtable(filename, 'ReadVariableNames', false); 
data = table2cell(dataTable); 
% Initializing an array to store the indices of found combinations  
matchingIndices = {}; 
% Iterate through each value in ComboStacker and search in the table  
for i = 1:size(ComboStacker, 1) 
    for j = 1:size(ComboStacker, 2) 
        userInput = ComboStacker{i, j}; 
        matches = cellfun(@(x) strcmp(x, userInput), data); 
        indices = find(matches); 
        % If non empty store the indices 
        if ~isempty(indices) 
            matchingIndices{end+1} = indices; 
        end 
    end 
end 

You can filter out the redundant indices by using the “unique” function.

To know more about the ‘’readtable” or “cellfun” functions, you can refer the following links:

• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/readtable.html
• https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cellfun.html

Hope this helps!