Cell Arrays in MATLAB

In MATLAB, cell arrays are a type of arrays which stores elements of different data types and sizes in different cells, or one could say that cell arrays allow users to store heterogeneous data into a single array. For example, let us create a cell array which holds the name and age of a person.

Example 1:

% MATLAB Code for Cell
arr = {"Harry", "Stark", 23}

Output:

This will create a cell array of 1x3:

This was a simple example of cell arrays but, this is not a feasible way of creating them. So, we will now see better and efficient ways of creating and accessing the elements within.

Creating Empty Cell Arrays:

The cell() function creates an empty cell array of desired size. Its syntax is

arr_name = cell (<size>);

 Let us see some examples, this will create a cell array of size x size dimensions.

Example 2:

% Creating Empty Cell Arrays Code
arr = cell(3);

Output:

Example 3:

Creating a cell array of size, size1 x size2 x ... x sizeN.

% MATLAB Code for Creating Empty Cell Arrays
arr = cell(3,2,3);

Output:

The resultant cell array would be of (3x2)x3 size.

Accessing Elements of Cell Arrays:

The elements of a cell array can be accessed by the same method of accessing ordinary arrays, by the indexing method. Let us see this with the help of an example.

Example 4:

% Accessing Elements of Cell Arrays in MATLAB
    arr = {
        ["Harry", "Stark"];
        2:9;
        linspace(1,2,5)
          };

% Accessing each element, one by one
  arr(1)
  arr(2)
  arr(3)

Output: