Cell Array min excluding zero

Hi, I want to find a min value that is not 0 from a cell array that has different number of elements in it:

    cost = [1*11 double]; [1*12 double]; [1*7 double] and so on

at the moment I am finding the min like this:

[M,I] = min([cost_hist{:}]);

and I tried different variations with ~= 0 with no success. The index is also important.

Thanks in advance, Asher

[harjeet singh]

min means the average of every mat?

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

For this example, what is the expected result?

a={[0 10 0  2 4] [4 3 8] [0 5 -2 15]  [2 6]}

[Asher Metzger]

the minimum number. sorry if I wasn't clear

[Asher Metzger]

and if there is a simple way I would also like to find the cell index the minimum number is in

[Asher Metzger]

in you example I would like to get -2 for the minimum and 3 for the cell number

Answer 1

[Jan]

C = {[0 10 0  2 4] [4 3 8] [0 5 -2 15]  [2 6]};

minValue = Inf;
minIndex = 0;
for k = 1:numel(C)
  Elements = C{k}(C{k} ~= 0);
  aMin     = min(Elements);
  if aMin < minValue
    minValue = aMin;
    minIndex = k;
  end
end
disp(minValue)
disp(minIndex)

[Asher Metzger]

Thanks. very elegant and instructive.

Answer 2

[harjeet singh]

you may try this

r=0;
c=0;
min_num=inf;
for i=1:size(cost,1)
    for j=1:size(cost,2)
        a=cost{i,j};
        if(min(a(:))<min_num)
            min_num=min(a(:));
            r=i;
            c=j;
        end
    end
end
display(strcat('position r:',num2str(r),'position c:',num2str(c)));
display(strcat('min number:',num2str(min_num)))