Substituting values to/from a cell array

Suppose I have 2 cell array:

a={4 1 3 5; 5 5 1 4}

b={*5* 1 3; 1 3 4}

How can I substitute the values in cell array a(column 2:4) using values from b(column 1:3) that corresponds to the values in a(column 2 and 3)?

The resultant matrix should be this

resultant={4 1 3 4
           5 5 1 3}

P/S: This is a very simple example from the code which I'm working on at the moment. I would like to know how to get about it and I will do the necessary adjustments. Thank you.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

a={4 1 3 5; 5 5 1 4}
b={5 1 3; 1 3 4}
a(:,2:4)=b(:,1:3)

[Amit Nambiar]

Hi Azzi, Why has he used '{}' type of brackets to declare arrays, how is this different from '[]' brackets?

[Jan]

See: help cell. With curly braces the elements can have different size and type, while with square brackets, all elements must have the same type and matching dimensions (roughly spoken - there is an automatic type conversion also for convenience).

[Amit Nambiar]

Oh... now I understand...Thank you Jan Simon!