how to remove the first 5 characters from a cell array 343x1 cell

Hello all, I would like to remove the first few characters from every single cell (343), yet I am not much aware of how to do it. I tried to solve the problem via googling it yet could not find anything that would fit my case. The cell array is attached. Example: for "d035-117" for instance i would like to convert it into a form of "117". The first 5 characters need to be truncated. Thanks for your advices and help in advance!

[Jack]

Do you have the answer already, because i don't get it too?

[Image Analyst]

@Jack you can see he accepted my answer below so I guess it worked for him.

If you have any more questions, then attach your data and code to read it in with the paperclip icon after you read this:

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Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

How about (untested)

for k = 1 : length(ca)
    cellContents = ca{k};
    % Truncate and stick back into the cell
    ca{k} = cellContents(6:end);
end

See FAQ: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#What_is_a_cell_array.3F

[NU_YU]

Dear Image Analyst,

Thank you for the link, it is quite helpful. Using your script I got some unnecesary stuff in the output but probably it is because of my data. Many many THANKS! :)

[Image Analyst]

Well post your data. Maybe it's not always the first 5 characters that need to be removed. Maybe you need to search for a "-" dash location or something.

[NU_YU]

I am sorry, all is good. I got it wrong. Your script works perfectly. Highly appreciated. May I ask you an additional question, I want to convert the cell into numeric and plot it, or may i plot it as it is? (i don't know, but it gives and error message). i tried out cell2mat (that was the only i could find (there is no cell2num option) yet that one gave me funny answers, like "cell2mat(name(012))

ans =

036

>> cell2mat(name(036))

ans = 108". What would you suggest me to do?

Thank you!

[Supriya Gain]

I have a folder which contains 389 CSV files. And each CSV file has a dimension of 82x1. So basically it's a 1D matrix. Now the first element (i.e. A1) of every CSV file is 'VAR'. Now I want to remove this 'VAR' and shift my matrix to the upside. That means I want to remove A1 element and shift the whole matrix from A1. How to do that.

[Image Analyst]

@Supriya Gain try reading it into a table and deleting the first column

t = readtable(filename);
t = t(:, 2:end)

If that doesn't work, start a new question of your own (not here) and attach one of the CSV files there.

Answer 2

[Jos (10584)]

If A is your cell-array of strings, this oneliner will do the job:

B = cellfun(@(x) x(1:end-5), A, 'un', 0)

[NU_YU]

Hi Jos,

I am not good at in matlab, so i sound dumb for sure. I did what you had suggested and it worked for the first 3 characters, not for the last 3. i substituted it with x(6:9), but it gace me an error. anyhow, thanks! I will try to solve it somehow. much appreciated

[Leone Campos]

For those who are wondering what 'un' is, it stands for 'UniformOutput'.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cellfun.html#d124e178066