Remove specific field and "push up" its contents without losing the data.

I am loading a structure into MatLab and I would like to remove a field without losing the contents of that field. I'll explain exactly what I mean nowsince that may be confusing.

After loading the structure

Data.c1 = load(Data.mat);

The output is

Data.c1.Data.sN;    % where I have 1-N "s" fields

I want to effectively convert this to

Data.c1.sN;     % "pushing up" the "s" fields from 1-N

All the data within the lowest "s" fields would be moved up and take the place of the field Data in the variable Data.

Is there an easy way to do that?

Answer 1

[Nathaniel H Werner]

Looks like something as simple as this works.

A = struct2cell(Data);
B = A{1};
C = B.Data.s;
Data.c1 = C;

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

temp = rmfield(Data.c1, 'Data');
fn_temp = fieldnames(Data.c1);
fn_c1D = fieldnames(Data.c1.Data);
combined_cell = [struct2cell(fn_temp); struct2cell(Data.c1.Data)];
combined_fn = [fn_temp;fn_c1D];
Data.c1 = cell2struct(combined_cell, combined_fn);

Obviously test this first !!

[Nathaniel H Werner]

Looks promising, I'll test it.

[Nathaniel H Werner]

I'm getting this error when I run it.

Undefined function 'struct2cell' for input arguments of type 'cell'.

combined_cell = [struct2cell(fn_temp); struct2cell(Data.c1.Data)];

Isn't struct2cell a built in MatLab function though?

[Nathaniel H Werner]

I saw you deleted a comment about replacing fn_temp with temp, and that gave this error.

Error using cell2struct
Number of field names must match number of fields in new structure.

Any other ideas?

It might have to do with my combined cell being a 1 x 1 cell containing a size 1 x 10 struct and how temp is empty.

When I change temp back to fn_temp this is the error I get.

Check for incorrect argument data type or missing argument in call to function 'struct2cell'.

[Walter Roberson]

If temp is empty, the implication is that Data.c1.Data is the only field within Data.c1 . In such a case, the code becomes very simple:

Data.c1 = data.c1.Data;

The longer code I had was based upon the idea that you had additional Data.c1.* fields that needed to be preserved.

[Nathaniel H Werner]

I do have those fields. Maybe I missed something in the original files when I asked the question but they are all of the form Data.c1.Data.sN.

[Walter Roberson]

If you use

fieldnames(Data.c1)

then does anything other than Data show up ?