Replace string values in a table

I have a column in a table with 3 wine types defined as character values "1", "2" and "3". I want to replace these values with "French", "Spanish" and "Italian" respectively. I am treating the column as an array of strings and using the tried and trusted combination of a for loop and if/elseif ladder to select and replace each of the string values in the table. Howver, when I run this in the command window, I get an error saying 'Unable to perform assignment because the left and right sides have a different number of elements' . My code is listed below and the array I am trying run it on is attached.

for i = 1:size(Typ)

if((Typ(i))=="1")

Typ(i)="French"

elseif((Typ(i))=="2")

Typ(i)="Spanish"

elseif((Typ(i))=="3")

Typ(i)="Italian"

else

end

end

Answer 1

[Mathieu NOE]

hello

my 2 cents suggestion

Typ = readtable('Typ.csv');
Typ = table2array(Typ);

for i = 1:numel(Typ)
    if((Typ(i))== 1)
      newTyp{i,1}='French';
    elseif((Typ(i))==2)
       newTyp{i,1}='Spanish';
    elseif((Typ(i))==3)
       newTyp{i,1}='Italian';   
    else
    end
end
 
Typ = newTyp;

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

The simple MATLAB approach would be to use indexing:

T = readtable('Typ.csv');
V = ["French";"Spanish";"Italian"];
T.Typ = V(T.V1)

T = 178×2 table
    V1      Typ   
    __    ________

    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"
    1     "French"

Answer 3

[Eric Sofen]

This is what categorical is built for! When you create the categorical, you can specify the data, value set, and category names.

T = readtable("https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/929319/Typ.csv");
T.Typ = categorical(T.V1, 1:3, ["French", "Spanish","Italian"])

T = 178×2 table
    V1     Typ  
    __    ______

    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French
    1     French