Referring to and Showing Cell Array Elements and Attributes:

Just as with the other vectors, we can refer to individual elements of the cell arrays. The only difference is that the curly braces are used for the subscripts. For illustration, this refers to the second element of the cell array cellrowvec:

> cellrowvec{2}

ans =

a

The Row and column indices are used to refer to an element in a matrix for illustration,

>> cellmat{1,1}

ans =

23

The Values can be assigned to cell array elements. For illustration, after preallocating the variable mycellmat, the elements can be initialized:

>> mycellmat{1,1} = 23

mycellmat =

[23]  []

[]  []

Whenever an element of a cell array is itself a data structure, then only the type of the element is displayed when the cell array contents are shown. For illustration, in the cell arrays just generated, the vector is shown just as 1 × 5 double. Referring to that element particularly would display its contents, the illustration is as follows,

>> cellmat{2,1}

ans =

  1   3   5   7   9

As this element is a vector, the parentheses are used to refer to its elements. For illustration, the fourth element of the preceding vector is as shown below:

>> cellmat{2,1}(4)

ans =

  7

Note that the index in the cell array is given in the curly braces, and then parentheses are used to refer to an element of the vector.

We can also refer the subsets of cell arrays, for illustration,

>> cellcolvec{2:3}

ans =

a

ans =

  1   3   5   7   9

Note, though, that MATLAB stored cellcolvec{2} in the default variable ans, and then substituted that with the value of cellcolvec{3}. This is because the two values are of various types, and hence cannot be stored altogether in ans.

Though, they could be stored in two separate variables by having a vector of variables on the left-hand side of the assignment.

>> [c1 c2] = cellcolvec{2:3}

c1 =

a

c2 =

  1   3   5   7   9