Matlab Array of structures: string not working - matlab

I am reading an input from a file and importing it into my data to run in Matlab:
parts = strread(tline,'%s','delimiter',';')
employee(i).name = parts(1);
employee(i).salary= str2double(parts(2));
Then I try to print it out:
for i = 1:3
fprintf('salary: %.2f\n',employee(i).salary);
fprintf('employee name: %s\n',employee(i).name);
end
The salary prints with no problem. But the for the variable "name" it gives an error:
Error using fprintf
Function is not defined for 'cell' inputs.
fprintf('employee name: %s\n',employee(i).name);
I looked for some other examples:
access struct data (matlab)
How do I access structure fields dynamically?
Matlab Error: Function is not defined for 'cell' inputs
How do i define a structure in Matlab
But there is nothing to address this case, where only string is not working.
I have not explicitly declared the data as struct, i.e. inside the code there is nowhere the "struct" word is included, but Matlab apparently automatically understand it as an "Array of structures".
Any hints what might be missing here?
All comments are highly appreciated!

The issue is that employee(k).name is a cell (check with iscell(employee(1).name)) and the format string %s doesn't know how to handle that.
The reason that it is a cell is because strread returns a cell array. To grab an element from the result (parts), you want to use {} indexing which returns a string rather than () which will return a cell.
employee(i).name = parts{1};

Related

Trouble with looping function into structure index

I'm relatively new to matlab and would really appreciate any help.
Currently, I have a function (we'll call it readf) that reads in data from a single ascii file into a struct of multiple fields (we'll call it cdata).
names = cellstr(char('A','B','C','D','E','F','G'));
cdata = readf('filestring','dataNames',names);
The function works fine and gives me the correct output of a struct with these field names, with the value of each field name being a cell array of the corresponding data.
My task is to create a for loop that uses this readf function to read in a folder of these ascii files at once. I'm trying to work it so that the for loop creates a struct with an index of the different cdata structs. After trying a few different methods, I am stumped.
This is what I have so far.
files = struct2cell(dir('folderstring')); %creates a cell array of the names of the files withing the folder
for ii=length(files);
cdata(ii) = readf([folderstring,files(1,1:ii),names],'dataName',names);
end;
This is currently giving me the following error.
"Error using horzcat
Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent."
I am not sure what is wrong. How can I fix this code so i can read in all the data from a folder at once??? Is there a better and more efficient way to do this than making an index to this struct? Perhaps a cell array of different structures or even a structure of nested structures? Thanks!
Change:
for ii=length(files);
cdata(ii) = readf([folderstring,files(1,1:ii),names],'dataName',names);
end;
To:
for ii=1:length(files); % CHECK to make sure length(files) is giving you the right number
cdata(ii) = readf([folderstring,files{ii},names],'dataName',names);
end;
% CHECK files{ii}, with 1,2,3 etc. is giving you the correct file name.

Matlab bad cell reference operation when if statement

I have a <850x1> cell called x. Each of the individual structures has a 'Tag' name and 'Data' cell with <7168x1 double> data values.
(i.e.
x{1,1}.Tag = 'Channel1', x{1,1}.Data= <7168x1 double>)
So, I want to go through the x cell, identify the structures with 'Channel1' Tag names and pull out that structure's data. Then, combine the data into a cell called Ch1. Here is my approach so far:
n=1:850
if x{n,1}.Tag == 'Channel1'
Ch1{:,n} = x{n,1}.Data;
end
However, this gives an error: Bad cell reference operation.
Any ideas what may be going wrong?
There are 2 issues here. First, your if statement will compare each entry in the string x{n,1}.Tag to each entry in the string 'Channel1'. If the dimensions are not the same, you will get an error. To fix this, you could use the string compare function, strcmp. The other issue is that you are assigning n to all values between 1 and 850 at once. This is the issue that is producing the actual error you are seeing. Instead, you want to step through each of these values one at a time with a for loop. I would suggest trying the following code:
for n=1:850
if strcmp(x{n,1}.Tag, 'Channel1')
Ch1{:,n} = x{n,1}.Data;
end
end

Matlab: Understanding a piece of code

I have a matlab code which is for printing a cell array to excel. The size of matrix is 50x13.
The row 1 is the column names.
Column 1 is dates and rest columns are numbers.
The dateformat being defined in the code is:
dFormat = struct;
dFormat.Style = struct( 'NumberFormat', '_(* #,##0.00_);_(* (#,##0.00);_(* "-"??_);_(#_)' );
dFormat.Font = struct( 'Size', 8 );
Can someone please explain me what the dFormat.Style code means ?
Thanks
The first line creates an empty struct (struct with no fields) called dFormat. A structure can contain pretty much anything in one of its fields, including another structure. The second line adds a field called 'Style' to the dFormat struct and sets it equal to another struct with a field called 'NumberFormat'. The 'NumberFormat' field is set equal to that long string of characters. You now have a structure of structures. The third line is similar to the second.
Note that the first line isn't really necessary unless dFormat already exists and it needs to be "zeroed out" as dFormat.Style with create it implicitly. However, using the struct function can make code more readable in some cases as objects use a similar notation for access methods and properties. In other words, all of your code could be replaced with:
dFormat.Style.NumberFormat = '_(* #,##0.00_);_(* (#,##0.00);_(* "-"??_);_(#_)';
dFormat.Font.Size = 8;
See this video from the MathWorks for more details and this list of helpful structure functions and examples.
#horchler already elaborated on structs, but I imagine you may actually be more interested in the content of this structs Style field.
In case you are solely interested in _(* #,##0.00_);_(* (#,##0.00);_(* "-"??_);_(#_), that does not really look like something MATLAB related to me.
My best guess is that this code is used to later feed some other program, for examle to build an excel file.

MATLAB : passing cell arguments

I have a function :
function myFunc(myStruct)
% file can contains one or a list of files
file = {fullfile(pwd,myStruct.name)}
end
from another file , when I call myFunc
myStruct.name = {'toto','titi','tata'}
myFunc(myStruct);
I got an error ,function isn't definied for cell
and I would like to pass to the field myStruct.name a string or a list of strings :
I mean that myStruct.name can accept one argument 'toto' or list of arguments {'toto','titi'}
When
How could I do that ?
Thanks
Finally we have a complete question.
Read the exception carefully, how you asked your question tells me that you did not understand it. The exception says that fullfile is not defined for cell inputs, which is simply fact. You have to call fullfile for each folder that should be generated, thus a for-loop is required, with something like file{idx} = fullfile(pwd,myStruct.name{idx}) in it.

Matlab: dynamic name for structure

I want to create a structure with a variable name in a matlab script. The idea is to extract a part of an input string filled by the user and to create a structure with this name. For example:
CompleteCaseName = input('s');
USER WRITES '2013-06-12_test001_blabla';
CompleteCaseName = '2013-06-12_test001_blabla'
casename(12:18) = struct('x','y','z');
In this example, casename(12:18) gives me the result test001.
I would like to do this to allow me to compare easily two cases by importing the results of each case successively. So I could write, for instance :
plot(test001.x,test001.y,test002.x,test002.y);
The problem is that the line casename(12:18) = struct('x','y','z'); is invalid for Matlab because it makes me change a string to a struct. All the examples I find with struct are based on a definition like
S = struct('x','y','z');
And I can't find a way to make a dynamical name for S based on a string.
I hope someone understood what I write :) I checked on the FAQ and with Google but I wasn't able to find the same problem.
Use a structure with a dynamic field name.
For example,
mydata.(casename(12:18)) = struct;
will give you a struct mydata with a field test001.
You can then later add your x, y, z fields to this.
You can use the fields later either by mydata.test001.x, or by mydata.(casename(12:18)).x.
If at all possible, try to stay away from using eval, as another answer suggests. It makes things very difficult to debug, and the example given there, which directly evals user input:
eval('%s = struct(''x'',''y'',''z'');',casename(12:18));
is even a security risk - what happens if the user types in a string where the selected characters are system(''rm -r /''); a? Something bad, that's what.
As I already commented, the best case scenario is when all your x and y vectors have same length. In this case you can store all data from the different files into 2 matrices and call plot(x,y) to plot each column as a series.
Alternatively, you can use a cell array such that:
c = cell(2,nufiles);
for ii = 1:numfiles
c{1,ii} = import x data from file ii
c{2,ii} = import y data from file ii
end
plot(c{:})
A structure, on the other hand
s.('test001').x = ...
s.('test001').y = ...
Use eval:
eval(sprintf('%s = struct(''x'',''y'',''z'');',casename(12:18)));
Edit: apologies, forgot the sprintf.