function input and output

Im creating a function where MPcell1 is a cell with 24 artist names of songs, unic is a cell with 11 unique artist names. I want the second row of the unic cell to add a 1 everytime unic = MPcell1 but that isn't happening. What is wrong with this?

function totsum = songsum(MPcell1, unic, c)
for i = 1:length(MPcell1)
  if MPcell1(i) == unic
     totsum = unic(2,c)+1;
     c = c+1;
    end
end
end

[James Tursa]

Every time MPcell1(i) matches any cell from the first row of unic?

Answer 1

[Niels]

Hi Carl Narup,

1. u get access to the cell arrays with {}

2. if you want to compare strings use strcmp

% here is 1 solution, i am not sure if you will understand it :/ with my test strings
MPcell1 = {'a', 'e', 'q', 't', 'w', 'q', 't', 'a', 'b', 'a'};
unic = {'a', 'q', 'w'};

-------------------------

function totsum = songsum(MPcell1, unic, c)

numb_artists = length(unic); % when adding a row to unic u get a matrix, using length can be confusing then
unic(2,:) = cell(1,numb_artists); % adding a row

for i = 1:numb_artists
    unic{2,i} = sum(strcmp(MPcell1,unic{1,i}));
end
end

strcmp compares all elements of MPcell1 at once with each element of unic and returns a logical array (with 1 if true and 0 if false)

sum adds up all 1s to the total number of succesfull hits

But be careful, if you are not used to use logical operations on matrices the result (or further comparisons) might surprise you.