Help with extracting info from a listbox in a specific way

Hello. I am using a uitable (in APPDesigner) to get user defined positions to move a stage to and take an image. There are 9 rows and 12 columns.

As can be seen, the red cells have been selected and this "list of positions" is populated in a listbox.

As I want to scan in the row direction (shown by black arrow), I want to collect all Row 1 positions, Row 2 positions etc and add to a string that I can then pass to a move routine for the stage.

"row =ALL" means all rows at that column are required, so this is the strings that Im trying to achieve by looping through the list box items, but dont know how to.

i.e. in row 1, all the columns 2,4,5,10,1 need to be scanned, so a string like:

"r1,2,4,5,10,1"

and row 2, the columns 2,4,5,10,1 need to be scanned, so

"r2,2,4,5,10,1"

...and for row 9

"r9,1,7"

This is my attempt

            %Get number of items in listbox 
            items=app.ListBox.Items
            nl=numel(items)
            s1='r1,'
            for i=1:nl
                line=(items(i))
                %get row
                if contains(line, 'ALL')
                    
                    disp(['Found at line',num2str(i)])
                    b=regexp(line,'\d+(\.)?(\d+)?','match') 
                    b=b{1}
                    cl=b{1,1}
                    cl= convertCharsToStrings(cl)
                    class(cl)
                    s1=strjoin(s1,cl)
                    break
                    
                end
                
            end

Or if its easier, an array of string arrays output would be ok

"r1" "2" "4" "5" "10" 1"

"r2" "2" "4" "5" "10" 1"

Thanks for any help

[BobH]

I recommend that you produce consistent-looking lines in the listbox, which will simplify parsing. For example,

• row=<whatever> always has a comma or not
• always spell out 'column' or always abbreviate (row 5)
• always 'exp(ms)' (row 5)

[Jason]

Yes of course, i didnt realise the inconsistency.

Answer 1

[BobH]

You can build a cell array using the row as the index, and each element of the cell array can be a numeric array of the column(s).

Build the output string when all the number-processing is complete

    str = { ...
        'row=ALL, column=2 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        'row=1, column=4 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        'row=2, column=4 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        'row=3, column=4 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        'row=5, column=ALL expms=100'; ...
        'row=1, column=10 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        'row=2, column=10 exp(ms)=100'; ...
        };

    nrows = 9;
    ncols = 12;
    R = cell(nrows,1);  % result

    % parse all lines of 'str'
    toks = regexp(str, 'row=(.*?),\s*column=(.*?)\s+exp', 'tokens', 'once');

    for i = 1:length(toks)
        % first element has the extracted row, 
        % second has extracted column
        [rn, cn] = toks{i}{:};
 
        if( strcmpi(rn,'ALL') )
            rn = 1:nrows;
        else
            rn = str2double(rn);
        end
 
        if( strcmpi(cn,'ALL') )
            cn = 1:ncols;
        else
            cn = str2double(cn);
        end
        
        % each element in rn is an index into R
        for w = 1:length(rn)
            for x = 1:length(cn)
                R{ rn(w) } = [ R{ rn(w) } cn(x) ]
            end
        end
    end
    
    % column duplications can occur with 'ALL'
    % remove the dups, but keep the original sequence
    %  (to get a sorted unique sequence, remove 'stable')
    R = cellfun(@(X) unique(X,'stable'), R, 'un',0);
    
    % build an output string
    for i = 1:nrows
        if( ~isempty(R{i}) )
            fprintf( 'r%d', i );
            fprintf( ',%d', R{i} );
            fprintf( '\n' );
        end
    end