Matlab: Remove a cell element from a cell array

Similar to the method to remove unwanted element in a matrix, which is discussed in details in another post (http://matlabnewbie.blogspot.com/2009/07/matlab-remove-all-unwatned-elements-in.html), the unwanted cell element can be removed from a cell array. The only difference is that the strcmp function should be used to identify where all those unwanted cells are.

The following example shows how to remove the cell 'good' from the cell array a, to be somehow humble.

a=[{'this'},{'is'},{'a'},{'good'},{'matlab'},{'blog'}];                 % create a cell array
a=a(~strcmp(a, 'good'))                                                          % remove the 'good' cell

Result looks like this:


a = 

    'this'    'is'    'a'    'matlab'    'blog'

Cell array, self-defined function, and save fig

I learned a lot of important things yesterday, after spend 10 hours in front of computer playing with MatLab. Alright, here's the code I came up with.


%Created on 6/30/2011
clear all
clc
sitenumber='01';


SampleLocation=[];
AER=[];
Err=[];




%% Importing data from intermediate file
filename='whatever it is.xlsx';
D1=xlsread(filename, 'A14:C25');
D2=xlsread(filename, 'I14:K25');
D3=xlsread(filename, 'Q14:S25');
D4=xlsread(filename, 'Y14:AA25');
D5=xlsread(filename, 'AG14:AI25');
D6=xlsread(filename, 'AO14:AQ25');
D7=xlsread(filename, 'AW14:AY25');
D8=xlsread(filename, 'BE14:BG25');
D9=xlsread(filename, 'BM14:BO25');
D10=xlsread(filename, 'BU14:BW25');
D11=xlsread(filename, 'CA14:CD25');
D12=xlsread(filename, 'CJ14:CL25');
D13=xlsread(filename, 'CR14:CT25');
D14=xlsread(filename, 'CZ14:DB25');
D15=xlsread(filename, 'DH14:DJ25');
D16=xlsread(filename, 'DP14:DR25');
D17=xlsread(filename, 'DX14:DZ25');
D18=xlsread(filename, 'EF14:EH25');
DCell={D1,D2,D3,D4,D5,D6,D7,D8,D9,D10,...
    D11,D12,D13,D14,D15,D16,D17,D18}; % Put all the arrays into one big cell array so that each time I can take one cell out and use it as the function input. 


% Use each array as function input % This is a self-defined function
for k=1:18
    [AERate Error]=getDecayrate(DCell{k}); %If use DCell (k), the function won't work.
    
    SampleLocation(1,k)=k;
    AER(1,k)=AERate;
    Err(1,k)=Error;
        
    newfilename=strcat('Site_', sitenumber, '_SampleLocation_', num2str(k),'.fig');
    saveas(gcf,newfilename) % This saveas function works pretty good. The .fig file can be edited later in MatLab.
end


 Result=[SampleLocation', AER', Err'];


%The following function calculates the first-order decay rate of the tracer gas, and returns two parameters. 

function [AER Err] = getDecayrate( location)
%UNTITLED2 Summary of this function goes here
%   Detailed explanation goes here


%AER=Data-1;
TimeS=zeros(1, length(location))';
LNC1=zeros(1, length(location))';
LNC2=zeros(1, length(location))';
for i=2 : length(location)
        TimeS(i)=(location(i,1)-location(1,1))*1440/60;
end


for j=2 : length(location)
    LNC1(j)=log(location(j,2)/location(1,2));
    LNC2(j)=log(location(j,3)/location(1,3));
end


slope1=sum(TimeS.*LNC1)/sum(TimeS.^2);
slope2=sum(TimeS.*LNC2)/sum(TimeS.^2);
AER=abs((slope1+slope2)/2);
Err=abs(AER-abs(slope1));
TimeModel=0:0.01:max(TimeS);
LNC1Model=TimeModel.*slope1;
LNC2Model=TimeModel.*slope2;
plot(TimeS, LNC1, 'xr',TimeS, LNC2, 'sb', TimeModel, LNC1Model,'r', TimeModel, LNC2Model, 'b', 'MarkerSize',10, 'LineWidth', 2)
title ('Location')
xlabel('Time (hours)')
ylabel('Ln(C/C0)')
end