How to delete an element from a cell

I have a column in matlab with data written this way:

19970422

30980524

63098754

etc …

And I only want to have the first 4 numbers (preferably as a new variable), for instance like this:

1997

3098

6309

How can I do it? Thanks a lot for your help.

[Maria]

Thanks a lot. It worked!

Answer 1

[Apdullah YAYIK]

Thats easy

X=[19970422 30980524 63098754]
New_X=floor(X/1000)

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

This gives the 5 first digits, use : floor(X/10000) . Also this works only for numbers with 8 digits.

[Image Analyst]

And she said she had cells, not regular numerical arrays, though perhaps she didn't really mean cells - who knows.

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

a=[19970422;30980524;63098754]
b=arrayfun(@num2str,a,'un',0)
out=cellfun(@(x) str2num(x(1:4)),b)

%or

a=[19970422;3098052422;630987541;0.23]
n=max(0,fix(log10(a)+1)-4)
out=fix(a./10.^n)

[Maria]

@Azzi Abdelmalek by any chance do you know how to do exactly the same thing, but with a cell element? Thanks in advance for your help!

[Maria]

About this question, problem solved!