Is there an efficient method to remove leading underscores from a cell array of strings?

Given

a={'rose','_tulip_blue','lilac','_daisy'}

is there an efficient way of stripping the leading underscores to give

b={'rose','tulip_blue','lilac','daisy'}

I tried

strtok(a,'_')

but that gives

b={'rose','tulip','lilac','daisy'}

and misses the '_blue'. I would like to avoid looping through the strings one at a time if possible.

Answer 1

[Adam]

[b, c] = strtok( a, '_' )
b = strcat( b, c )

looks like it works.

[Ken Campbell]

I agree it works :-)

It also copes with more than 2 underscores. For example.

a={'rose','_tulip_blue_red','lilac','_daisy'}
[b,c]=strtok(a,'_');
b=strcat(b,c);

gives

b={'rose'    'tulip_blue_red'    'lilac'    'daisy'}

Thanks

Answer 2

[AJ von Alt]

b = regexprep(a,'^_','','emptymatch')

[Ken Campbell]

That works too and is elegant. I should learn more about regular expressions. Thanks.