find strings in cell array using wildcards

Question

I have a cell array of which the last part looks like this:

Columns 8372 through 8375

    {'w20091231_2000.nc'}    {'w20091231_2020.nc'}    {'w20091231_2040.nc'}    {'w20091231_2100.nc'}

  Columns 8376 through 8379

    {'w20091231_2120.nc'}    {'w20091231_2140.nc'}    {'w20091231_2200.nc'}    {'w20091231_2220.nc'}

  Columns 8380 through 8383

    {'w20091231_2240.nc'}    {'w20091231_2300.nc'}    {'w20091231_2320.nc'}    {'w20091231_2340.nc'}

  Columns 8384 through 8387

    {'wD1.nc'}    {'wD2.nc'}    {'wD3.nc'}    {'wD4.nc'}

Now I want to rearrange this array so that it only contains the last four strings.{'wD1.nc'} {'wD2.nc'} {'wD3.nc'} {'wD4.nc'}

I tried

IndexC = strfind(names,'wD*.nc');
Index = find(not(cellfun('isempty',IndexC)))

and

Index = find(contains(names,'wD*.nc'));
names2=names(Index)

both work if wD*.nc is wD4.nc but then of course I only select the one value and not the four that I want. How do I get to use the * ?

Craig Arnold · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-28 10:19:33Z

1

I had to do some googling but found this https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/77039-comparing-strings-with-wildcards , and something like the following seems to work:

IndexC = regexp(names, regexptranslate('wildcard', 'wD*.nc'));
Index = find(not(cellfun('isempty',IndexC)));
names2=names(Index)

answered Aug 28, 2019 at 10:19

Craig Arnold

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Comments

obchardon · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-28 12:43:29Z

1

In one line using regexp with the match option:

x = regexp([x{:}],'wD\d+\.nc','match')

answered Aug 28, 2019 at 12:43

obchardon

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1 Comment

Wolfie Over a year ago

Although using [x{:}] could give undesired results if there happened to be a match across consecutive elements of x. You could avoid this by replacing [x{:}] with something like strjoin(x,'#') to concatenate them with some non-matching character in between.

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