8 
a={'a','aa','aaa','aaaa'}
length(a)
  4
size(a)
  1 4

How can I get the length of each element in the cell array with a single command? The desired output in the above example would be [1 2 3 4].

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2 Answers 2

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24 
cellfun('length',a)

"apply length(x) to each element x in a".

cellfun docs.

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1 Comment

More 'modern' usage is to supply a function handle as the first argument, i.e. cellfun(@length, a).
0

arrayfun - Apply function to each element of array check documentation: http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/arrayfun.html

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Are you really sure about ARRAYFUN in this case? You'd have to go through some contortions, i.e. arrayfun( @(c) length(c{1}), a) rather than the much simpler, and more obvious cellfun(@length, a)

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