Is there a simple approach to adding spaces before and after every number in a cell array, where each cell is a combination of numbers and letters?

Hello,

I have an [m x n] cell in the range of thousands. For simplicity, let's deal with a 2x3 cell instead. The elements are as follows:

{[123xswqe412]}      {[xasdak12399a8s]}      {[123123xq13]}
{[qasoasf1231]}      {[asd11skka13551]}      {[127u8adkja]}

Can you please advise on how I can make it so that the output is as follows:

{[123 xswqe 412]}      {[xasdak 12399 a 8 s]}     {[123123 xq 13]}
{[qasoasf 1231]}       {[asd 11 skka 13551]}      {[127 u 8 adkja]}

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[dpb]

That's almost assuredly a regexpr job but beyond my pay grade to try to write the expression! :)

Answer 1

[sloppydisk]

I don't know why I took the time to do this and my function separating the words is super ugly but I think you want something like this:

% string
str = '123xswqe412ew3';

% regular expression to separate string from number
expr = '\d+|\D+';

%create cell with strings
mycell = cell(50, 1);
mycell(:) = {str};

% perform function on cell 
mycell(:) = cellfun(@(x)doRegExp(x, expr), mycell, 'UniformOutput', false);

% function to separate strings
function f = doRegExp(str, expr)
ind = regexp(str, expr);
f = str(ind(1):ind(2)-1);
for i = 2:length(ind)-1
    a = str(ind(i):ind(i+1)-1); 
    f = [f, ' ', a];
end
f = [f, ' ', str(ind(i+1):end)];
end

[Hans Sunaryanto]

Hi Jasper,

Thanks a lot! The code works really well!

[Hans Sunaryanto]

Quick follow-up question: if I had a period (.) in the string, how can I make the code ignore this? Say instead of 123xswqe412ew3 I now have 123xswqe412ew3.6ajj, and I want to have '3.6 ajj' in the end instead

[sloppydisk]

ind = regexp(str, '\d+[\.]\d+|\D+|\d+', 'match')

I added an extra OR statement basically to check for digits with dots in between. And maybe this match option in regexp is actually an easier way of splitting your string.

[Hans Sunaryanto]

Yes it is! Thank you so much!!

Answer 2

[jonas]

I'll just go ahead and give an alternative answer because I spent way too much time trying to solve this seemingly easy problem :)

clear all;
str='1.23AB.C44444OA43872AX5';
[ind11,ind12] = regexp(str, '\d[A-Za-z]');
[ind21,ind22] = regexp(str, '[A-Za-z]\d');
ind=sort([ind11 ind12 ind21 ind22])
chars=str(ind)
str=regexprep(str,'\d[A-Za-z]','X X')
str=regexprep(str,'[A-Za-z]\d','X X')
ind3=regexp(str,'X')
str(ind3)=chars

I tried solving the problem with '.', as mentioned in the comment. Unfortunately a new bug appeared, where substrings like 21.FP will not be split. Not sure how to solve that though.

[Hans Sunaryanto]

Thank you! That's fine since I don't think I'll ever need a letter immediately after a dot. Thanks again!