How to return a vector of the 2nd element in each cell array specified

Question

If I have a cell array like this:

>> mycellarray = [{'Country' 'State' '1/22/01' '1/23/01' '1/24/01'};{'Afghanistan' '' [0 0] [0 1] [0 2]}]
mycellarray =
 2×5 cell array
{'Country'    }    {'State' }    {'1/22/01'}    {'1/23/01'}    {'1/24/01'}
{'Afghanistan'}    {0×0 char}    {[    0 0]}    {[    0 1]}    {[    0 2]}

I can retrieve all the data values I need using:

>> myvals = mycellarray(2,3:5)
myvals =
 1×3 cell array
 {[0 0]}    {[0 1]}    {[0 2]}

I would like to extract the 2nd element in each vector, so I would get a vector back like this:

[0 1 2]

How would I do that?

You might want to use a table for these data.

Cris Luengo
– Cris Luengo

2025-07-29 17:30:25 +00:00
Commented Jul 29 at 17:30 — Cris Luengo
– Cris Luengo, Commented Jul 29 at 17:30

Wolfie · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-29 16:48:25Z

5

You could do this with an intermediate step to stack all of the 2-element arrays, then extract the 2nd column

v = vertcat(mycellarray{2,3:5});
myvals = v(:,2).';

The .' is a transpose to get a row vector as in your question, if a column is OK then you can omit this

If you particularly want a one-liner or to skip the intermediate matrix, you could use cellfun to loop over the sub-cell of elements you want and pick the 2nd element in each:

myvals = cellfun( @(x) x(2), mycellarray(2,3:5) );

edited Jul 29 at 16:48

answered Jul 29 at 16:30

Wolfie

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