How to remove numbers between specific symbols in text array?

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding how to modify a text array in Matlab which contains numbers between two "_" symbols. Here some examples:

• If the string has the following structure: "Gas_1_O2" I expect the following result: "Gas_O2". This should work for every number between two "_" symbols.
• If the string has another structure nothing should happen (e.g. "Time" or "Flow_Fluidization").

The text string will later on be used for renaming a table.

I tried with the function extractBetween but it did not worked as I expected.

Thanks for your support.

Best,

Joseba

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

a="Gas_1_O2";
regexprep(a,'\_\d*.?\d*\_','_')

[Rik]

Can you explain your regex? I don't get why you're not using

'_[0-9]*_'

or

'_\d*_'

Your code will also remove 1k8 in this example:

a='Gas_1k8_O2';

[madhan ravi]

The code was put keeping only numbers (including decimals) in mind , '_[0-9]*_' or '_\d*_' would fail if there is a decimal number inbetween.

[madhan ravi]

In that case:

regexprep(a,'\_(\d+[\.]?\d*)\_','_')

[Stephen23]

"The code was put keeping only numbers (including decimals)..."

Remember that . by itself matches all characters, not just the decimal point / period chraacter.

[madhan ravi]

True Stephen that‘s why I used [\.] to preserve dot character in the latter comment.

Answer 2

[Rik]

You can use regular expressions for this task:

str1='Gas_1_O2';
str2='Flow_Fluidization';
regexprep(str1,'_[0-9]*_','_')
regexprep(str2,'_[0-9]*_','_')

Answer 3

[Joseba Moreno]

Hello again,

the script works good, thanks for it. I am facing now a minor problem with "duplicate variable names", due to the following reason:

Before renaming: "Temp_01_free", "Temp_02_free", etc.

After renaming: "Temp_free" in all cases. Is it possible to number the variables then as long as they are repeated? For instance: "Temp_free1", "Temp_free2", etc.

Thanks again!

Joseba

[Rik]

Why are you numbering variable names? That's a bad idea.