Match different sized cell arrays in Matlab

RECCELL is a cell array with 8 columns and 30000 rows:

 C1     C2      C3          C4   C5          C6     C7    C8
'AA'    1997    19970102    1   'BACHE'     'MORI'  148   127
'AA'    1997    19970108    2   'MORGAN'     []     1595  0
'AA'    1997    19970224    3   'KEMSEC'    'FATHI' 1315  297

CONCELL is a cell array with 4 columns and 70000 rows:

 C1     C2      D3          D4
'AA'    1997    19970116    2,75
'AA'    1997    19970220    2,71
'AA'    1997    19970320    2,61

I would like to add to RECCELL the 4 columns of CONCELL only in case the C1s match and C3 and D3 (both dates) are the closest possible. For instance I would get in this example:

 C1     C2      C3         C4    C5           C6     C7    C8   C1      C2      D3          D4           

'AA'    1997    19970102    1   'BACHE'      'MORI'  148   127  'AA'    1997    19970116    2,75

'AA'    1997    19970108    2   'MORGAN'     []      1595  0    'AA'    1997    19970116    2,75

'AA'    1997    19970113    3   'KEMSEC'    'FATHI'  1315  297  'AA'    1997    19970220    2,71

• To the first row of RECCELL corresponds the first row of CONCELL.
• To the second row of RECCELL corresponds the first row of CONCELL.
• To the third row of RECCELL corresponds the second row of CONCELL.

The code I have so far is:

[~, indCon, indREC] = intersect(CONCELL(:,1), RECCELL(:,1));
REC_CON=[RECCELL(indREC,:),CONCELL(indCon,:)];
NO_REC_CON= RECCELL(setdiff(1:size(RECCELL,1), indREC),:);

It's wrong because I cannot use intersect for a string element and because I am not considering the second condition, which is to choose the closest dates.

Can someone help me? Thank you

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Maria - are there four or five columns in CONCELL? When you match on a column, do you copy over all but the first

You could do something like the following: iterate through each of the elements in RECCELL and look for those from CONCELL that match on the first column. Then find that row of CONCELL whose date is closest to that for RECCELL

 [mr,mc] = size(RECCELL);
 [~,nc]  = size(CONCELL);

 % append empty cells to RECCELL that may be populated with matching data
 RECCELL = [RECCELL cell(mr,nc)];

 for k=1:size(RECCELL,1)

    % get the indices from CONCELL whose first column matches that of the
    % first column of the kth RECCELL row
    [idcs] = find(strcmpi(CONCELL(:,1),RECCELL{k,1}));

    if ~isempty(idcs)

        % find the two dates that are closest
        dateDiff = abs(cell2mat(CONCELL(idcs,3))-cell2mat(RECCELL(k,3)));

        % find the minimum
        [~,minIdcs] = min(dateDiff);

        % just grab the first index (in case multiple with same difference)
        minIdx = minIdcs(1);

        % append the data
        for u=1:nc
            RECCELL{k,mc+u} = CONCELL{minIdx,u};
        end

    end
 end

Try the above and see what happens!

[Maria]

Geoff the code worked perfectly! Really really good.Just to answer your initial question, CONCELL has 4 columns, and I gave a title to each column in the example, but in my variable in Matlab the first row entitled here as C1, C2, C3 and so on does not exist, so there's no prob. Not sure if that was the question. :) Thank you very much.

[Geoff Hayes]

Glad that it worked, Maria. I wasn't sure about the last column in CONCELL since it appeared to be a comma separated list of two numbers (for example 2,75).