Search a cell array of structs

I have a large one-dimensional cell array of structs. All the structs have the same format (i.e. same fields in the same order). I would like to search for a particular value in a struct field. E.g. say one of the fields is 'name'. I would like to be able to search the cell array and get back indices of all cells which contain a struct where the 'name' field contains 'sally'. Is there a straight-forward way to do this?

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Try

      cac{1} = struct( 'name', 'val1' );
      cac{2} = struct( 'name', 'val2' );
      cac{3} = struct( 'name', 'val3' );
      cac{4} = struct( 'name', 'sally' );
      strcmp( cellfun( @(sas) sas.name, cac, 'uni', false ), {'sally'} )

which returns

    ans =
         0     0     0     1

Straight-forward - maybe not.

[Ben]

Could you elaborate a bit on this? I haven't looked into cellfun at all. Is 'sas' the name of the function? What is cac?

[per isakson]

There is a good description together with examples in the documentation: cellfun, Apply function to each cell in cell array

cac and sas are names of variables.

[Ben]

I've looked at that, and still don't understand 'uni'. Is that a valid shortening of 'UniformOutput'? Also, where do I find out about the function handle 'sas'?

[per isakson]

Yes, 'uni' is a valid shortening of 'UniformOutput'

@(sas) sas.name is the definition of a anonymous function and sas is just an argument.

[Ben]

I've run across a problem using this idea. It works fine in the if statement, but throws an error in the loop. I put a break at line 8, and if I hover over "restaurants", Matlab knows it's a cell array of structs, just like "reviews" is. Any ideas on why I'm getting this error?