Delete rows from a structure that contain a certain string anywhere in the field

Hey everyone,

Two beginners' questions:

1) First question: I have a large structure ('structure') and I want to delete rows that contain 'AA' anywhere in the variable 'name' (example name: 'DKA011_AA1.vhdr'). I tried using

mask = ismember({structure.name}, 'AA');
structure = structure(~mask);

but 'mask' only contains zeros (probably because the fields do not only contain 'AA'). How can I delete all rows that contain AA anywhere in the text?

2) Second question: In the same structure ('structure'), I have a variable 'date' in this format '14-Apr-2016 09:51:03'. How can I transform this variable in this format: '14.4.2016 09:51'?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Tobias

[dpb]

As always, it'll be much simpler to try to write specific-application syntax for a particular data structure if we actually can see/touch the pertinent struct. For example, the use of "rows" is ambiguous here -- is this a struct array or is the field an array -- or both or neither but something else?

Attach a .mat file that has a representative sample of the subject struct

But, if one assumes is a struct array and the intent is as shown in Q? the idea is to remove those elements of the array containing the offending string, then that's simple enough --

s(contains({s.name,'AA'}))=[];      % delete those found

or

s=s(~contains({s.name,'AA'}));      % keep those NOT found

NOTA BENE: the curlies "{}" around the reference to the struct field to collect the returned list into a single cell array to operate over.

2)

 t=datetime('14-Apr-2016 09:51:03','format','dd.M.uuuu HH:mm');

on creation before storing or

for i=1:numel(s)
  s(i).date.Format='dd.M.uuuu HH:mm';
end

if can't fix it on initial creation but must patch later. Unfortunately, there's not a way to do the assignment in an anonymous function to avoid the explicit loop construct (that I could dream up, anyway).

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I tried this and it works

% Create a structure
str = dir('*.m')
% Extract one of the string fields into a cell array.
allFilenames = {str.name}'
% Find out which structures in the structure array have the word we're looking for.
indexesToDelete = contains(allFilenames, 'demo')
% Delete items with 'demo' in the field.
str(indexesToDelete) = [];

So for you with your existing structure called "structure" and looking for _AA in the "name" field, you'd do

% Extract one of the string fields into a cell array.
allFilenames = {structure.name}'
% Find out which structures in the structure array have the word we're looking for.
indexesToDelete = contains(allFilenames, '_AA', 'IgnoreCase', true)
% Delete items with 'AA' in the field.
structure(indexesToDelete) = [];