match a word/letter and add to the string cell - without a for loop

Hi, I would like to check for a letter in a cell string and if it matches the letter I would like to add a word or a sentence to the string eg:

Initial cell:

 P etc etc etc
 A etc etc etc
 P etc etc etc
 A etc etc etc

Final Cell

 aaa P etc etc etc
 A etc etc etc
 aaa P etc etc ect
 A etc ect ect

My appologies I know this is a horible example.

However, I would like to accomplish this without using a for loop. I've tried to use cellfun but I couldnt figure out how to do it. Thank you

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

What is the size of your initial cell? are you looking for matching letter in the first column or in all the cell array?

[Image Analyst]

What is in the cell? A 2D character array (in which case you'd have to pad it with blanks)? Or a 4 row by 1 column cell array of strings? (i.e. your single cell contains a cell array) Or do you have a 4 by 4 cell array in the cell, which then gets changed to a 4 by 5 cell array in a single cell? Or do you actually mean "cell array" instead of "cell"? So that you have a 4 by 1 cell array? Please read the FAQ on cells: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#What_is_a_cell_array.3F so you can explain your situation/needs properly and precisely. As it is, it's ambiguous.

[Sven]

Yup, Vincent, I'll bet that if you can change your question so that you use actual code for your initialCell and finalCell, you'll have an answer returned within 10 minutes.

At the moment however your question is ambiguous because (for example) it's impossible to make a single cell look like the text you've provided for your finalCell, and it's not clear what your initialCell contents actually is.

[Vincent I]

Azzi: What is the size of your initial cell? are you looking for matching letter in the first column or in all the cell array?

The size of the initial cell could change. Yes, I am only looking for matching the first latter in the cell array.

Answer 1

[Jan]

Unfortunately the contents of your data is still not clear, although there have been questions for clarifications.

If you have:

C = {'P etc etc etc'; ...
     'A etc etc etc'; ...
     'P etc etc etc'; ...
     'A etc etc etc'}

This might help:

index    = strncmp(C, 'P', 1);
C(index) = strcat('aaa', C(index));

But if you have a different input, please explain this preferably by adding valid Matlab code, which creates the data exactly. The original question is the best place for such details, so take the chance to edit it instead of hiding important details in comments.