How to Save a raw array and delete NaN in a raw array

I am using xlsread to get data from .csv files. I need all of the information from these files, so the [raw] = xlsread(thisfile), it what I need to use. However, how would I go about saving this array as a .mat file and replacing any NaN values with empty cells?

I need to use the raw data, unless somebody else knows a way to get all text/numerical data into the array. I tried using textscan, but it was far to complicated.

Answer 1

[TastyPastry]

 arr(cellfun(@(x) any(isnan(x)),arr)) = {[]};

Where arr is your input array.

[Ibro Tutic]

That works, but it puts [] in the cells where NaN used to be but I want it blank. I tried to use ... = []; but it took my 10x17 array and put every number in the first row giving me a 1x217 array. It did remove the NaN's though.

[TastyPastry]

As Stephen said, you can't have an "empty" cell in a cell array. What you replace NaN with depends on what you're trying to do with the data. I think the empty vector is probably your best bet, since if you're trying to index out whatever cells are "empty", you could use isempty to find the empty cells.

[Ibro Tutic]

Thanks for the help!

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

In MATLAB there is no such thing as an empty cell. Every cell contains something, even if it just an empty array. Initializing a cell array using cell places empty arrays in each cell. You could:

• replace the contents of those cells with empty arrays.
• delete those cells.
• keep an index of which cells to ignore.

Whatevery way you create a cell array, the cells always contain another array:

>> X = cell(1,3)
X = 
    []    []    []
>> X{3}
ans =
     []
>> size(X{3})
ans =
     0     0
>> Y{3} = []
Y = 
    []    []    []

[Ibro Tutic]

So there is no way to replace the NaN's with empty cells? Is there a way I could combine the number and text arrays and use that?

[Stephen23]

I think the neatest and most robust solution would be to not change your cell contents at all and simply create a separate vector/array of indices that lets you keep track of those cells. This follows the programming best practice of minimizing changes to raw data.