match values of cells to numbers

Hello,

I have the following cell

cell =

  6×6 cell array

    {' A'}    {'B'       }    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {' A'}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {' A'}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {' A'}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {' A'}    {'D'       }    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    {' A'}    {'B'       }    {'C'       }    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}    {0×0 double}
    

The characters 'A', 'B, 'C' and 'D' and 'E' are stored in a cell called name

   name =

  5×1 cell array

    {'A'}
    {'B'}
    {'C'}
    {'D'}
    {'E'}

And to each letter, A, B, C , D and E I assign a number, 1 for A, 2 for B, 3 for C , 4 for D and 5 for E. I would like to create a matrix such as

    mat =

     1     2     0     0     0     0
     1     0     0     0     0     0
     1     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0     0
     1     4     0     0     0     0
     1     2     3     0     0     0

So far what I do is use strfind for each value of cell to see if it finds name{1}, name{2}, name{3} etc

for i=1:6
    for j=1:6
        for k=1:5
            idk1=strfind(cell{i,j},name{k});
            if isempty(idk1)
                mat(i,j,k)=0;
            else
                mat(i,j,k)=idk1;
            end
        end
    end
end

result=zeros(6,6);
for i=1:KK
    result(logical(ire(:,:,i)))=i;
end

Is there a simpler way to do this? This is just an exemple but I'll have cells with over 1000 rows and columns and I'd like to avoid checking each value individually.

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

% Fake data:
C = cell(6,6);
C(:,1) = {'A'};
C([1,6],2) = {'B'};
C(6,3) = {'C'};
C(5,2) = {'D'};
V = {'A','B','C','D','E'};
% Use ISMEMBER:
X = cellfun(@ischar,C);
M = zeros(size(C));
[~,Z] = ismember(C(X),V)
M(X) = Z

Which gives:

M =
   1   2   0   0   0   0
   1   0   0   0   0   0
   1   0   0   0   0   0
   1   0   0   0   0   0
   1   4   0   0   0   0
   1   2   3   0   0   0

[AM]

It works perfectly, thank you!