Delete some columns from structure array

Hi. I am working with a structure array S (1 X 50,000) with 10 fields in which some columns are multiuple entries ands sub-set of another column.

Here is the input,

S(1).f1=[10,20,30 40,50,60], S(1).f2=[100,20,50,60,70,140],.........S(1).f10=[11,22,33,44,55,66];

S(2).f1=[56,98,74,87,99] and S(2).f2=[101,54,69,20,11],....... S(2).f10=.........[54,55,65,74,90];

S(3).f1=...... and S(3).f2=.....

S(4).f1=.... and S(4).f2=.....

.

.

S(13).f1=[10,20,30 40,50,60,70,80,90,100], S(13).f2=[100,20,50,60,70,140,160,200,220,300],.........S(13).f10=[11,22,33,44,55,66,65,72,34,61];

.

.

.

As we can see S(1) is a sub-set of S(13). I want to write a loop to compare all the columns and retain only the ones with maximum length; meaning that to delete S(1) and retain S(13) in the above example.

Can someone please help me with this.

Answer 1

[Jan]

toDel = false(1, numel(S));
for i1 = 1:numel(S)
   data1 = S(i1).f1;
   n1    = numel(data1);
   for i2 = i1 + 1:numel(S)
       if ~toDel(i2)
          data2 = S(i2).f1;
          n2    = numel(data2);
          if n1 >= n2
              if isequal(data1(1:n2), data2)
                 toDel(i2) = true;
              end
          elseif isequal(data1, data2(1:n1))
              toDel(i1) = true;
          end
       end    
   end
end
S(toDel) = [];

Maybe "subset of" does not mean, that the first elements are equal. Then all(ismember()) might be, what you need instead of isequal.