extract numbers from string in a cell

Hi, I have a cell containing a string such as 'TT21abc.def'. I want to extract just the numbers so I'm left with '21'. Does anyone know how? I tried using sscanf but I was getting errors and think I don't have the right format inputs. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

you can use regexprep or some ascii value representation comparison to do so, e.g.

a = {'TT21abc.def'};

%ascii value comparison, char(48) = '0' and char(57) = '9'  
a{1}(a{1} <= 57 & a{1} >= 48)

%or use regexprep
regexprep(a{1},'\D','')

If you have a cell array with strings, I would use regexprep because it can handle cell arrays of strings as input

b = {'TT21abc.def'
    'sdfsdf34435afafsd.,.,3434'}

out =  regexprep(b,'\D','')

Answer 2

[Andrei Bobrov]

with using function regexp

regexp(a,'\d*','match')

or:

b = {'TT21abc.def'
    'sdfsdf34435afafsd.,.,3434'}
out =  regexp(b,'\d*','match');
out = cat(2,out{:})