how to search and match

i have 4 columns currently and I am using strfind to help find a string and print out the corresponding values . for example,

column a contains [a,b,c,d,e]
column b contains [a-1,a-2, a-3, b, c-4, c-5,...]

i would like column a to print out to the corresponding values in a, so in column a, a should be printed 3x.

how can i do this.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

What should contain the result?

[Jan]

The data are not explained clearly. What is "a column" and what does "column a contains [a,b,c,d,e]" mean in valid Matlab syntax? Is "a" a column cell like {'a'; 'b'; 'c'; 'd'; 'e'}, or is it a double vector and "a", "b" etc are placeholders? It looks strange that "a" is used as specifier of the column and as element of the column also.

I suggest to post the inputs in valid Matlab syntax and to show an example of the wanted result with real data.

[andrew]

To clarify: i mean to say column 1, and column 2, and yes like you said Jan it should be cell column ['a','b','c', 'd',....]

the result should be: column 1 ['a','a','a'...] and in column 2 ['a-1','a-2',a-3'....]

[Jan]

While "['a','b','c', 'd',....]" is equivalent to 'abcd', a cell would be "{'a','b','c', 'd',....}". The curly braces are important.

Do I understand correctly, that the input data is b and you want to keep only the part left from the "-" character? Which purpose has the "column 1" then?

You wrote, that you have 4 columns, but I see a description of 2 columns only (I still write column, because I'm not sure what type and dimensions these object have).