converting cell string into number

hello every one; how to convert string in cell into number where each character positioned in one column except the element position 18 or value 24.

example:
  wm={'000'    '402'    '101'    '000'    '000'    '0124'    '011'};
estimated result:
y=[0;0;0;0;0;2;1;0;1;0;0;0;0;0;0;0;1;24;o;1;1];

[Jan]

Where is the 4th element '4'?

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

abdullahi - you can try the following code which iterates over each element in the cell array and splits each string into single digits. When the 18th is encountered, then the remaining portion of that string is used (this would be the 24).

 y   = []; 
 pos = 1;
 % iterate over each string in the cell array
 for k=1:length(wm)
    % grab the string
    str = wm{k};
    % iterate over each character in the string
    for v=1:length(str)
        % if not at the 18th position then extract the single digit
        if pos ~= 18
            y   = [y ; str2double(str(v))]; 
            pos = pos + 1;
        % else at the 18th position so extract the remaining digits of string
        else
            y   = [y ; str2double(str(v:end))];
            pos = pos + 1;
            break;
        end
    end
 end

Try the above and see what happens!

Answer 2

[Andrei Bobrov]

wm={'000'    '402'    '101'    '000'    '000'    '0124'    '011'};
z = cellfun(@(x){x(1),x(2),x(3:end)},wm,'un',0);
y = str2double([z{:}]);