Deleting rows with specific rules - matlab

Question

I got a 20*3 cell array and I need to delete the rows contains "137", "2" and "n:T"
Origin data:
'T' '' ''
'NP(*)' '' ''
[ 137] '' ''
[ 2] '' ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(FCC_A1#1)'
'' '' '1:T'
[ 1200] [0.7052] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.7076] ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(FCC_A1#3)'
'' '' '2:T'
[ 1200] [0.0673] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.0671] ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(M23C6)'
'' '' '3:T'
[ 1200] [0.2275] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.2253] ''
[ 137] '' ''
[ 2] '' ''
And I want it to be like
'T' '' ''
'NP(*)' '' ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(FCC_A1#1)'
[ 1200] [0.7052] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.7076] ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(FCC_A1#3)'
[ 1200] [0.0673] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.0671] ''
'ARE' 'and' 'NP(M23C6)'
[ 1200] [0.2275] ''
[1.2051e+03] [0.2253] ''
I've tried regexp and strcmp and they don't work well. Plus the cell array also hard to deal with. Can anyone help?
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

If you can somehow read your original data so that all cells are strings or empty arrays (not numeric values), you can do it with strcmp and regexprep:
% The variable 'data' is a 2D-cell array of strings or empty arrays
datarep = regexprep(data,'^\d+:T','2'); % replace 'n:T' with '2' for convenience
remove1 = strcmp('2',datarep); % this takes care of '2' and 'n:T'
remove2 = strcmp('137',datarep); % this takes care of '137'
rows_keep = find(~sum(remove1|remove2,2)); % rows that will be kept
solution = data(rows_keep,:)
For example, with this data
'aa' 'bb' 'cc'
'dd' 'dd' '2'
'137' 'dd' 'dd'
'dd' 'dd' '11:T'
'1:T' '1:137' 'dd'
'dd' '' []
the result in the variable solution is
'aa' 'bb' 'cc'
'dd' '' []

Answer 2

I just tried the following codes on my desktop and it seems to do the trick. I made a as the cell array you had.
L = size(a, 1);
mask = false(L, 1);
for ii = 1:L
if isnumeric(a{ii, 1}) && (a{ii, 1} == 137 || a{ii, 1} == 2)
mask(ii) = true;
elseif ~isempty(a{ii, 3}) && strcmp(a{ii, 3}(end-1:end), ':T')
mask(ii) = true;
end
end
b = a(~mask, :)
Now, b should be the cell array you wanted. Basically, I created a logical mask that indicates the position of rows that satisfy the rules, then use the inverse of it to call out the rows.

Answer 3

Here is another simple option:
%Anonymous function that checks if a cell is equal to 173 or to 2 or fits the '*:T*' pattern
Eq137or2 = #(x) sum(x == 137 | x == 2) | sum(strfind(num2str(x), ':T') > 1)
%Use the anonymous functions to find the rows you don't want
mask = = sum(cellfun(Eq137or2, a),2)
%Remove the unwanted rows
a(~mask, :)