cell array conversion to numeric

My cell array looks somewhat like this:

a = {'xxx' , 'xxx' , '24' , '63' , 'ggg' , 'ggg'}

Note: the numbers are also formatted as strings.

Is there a one-line operation (without loops) to convert the 'xxx' and 'ggg' to NaN, and the numbers in strings to numeric so that a becomes numeric array?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Use str2double():

a = {'xxx' , 'xxx' , '24' , '63' , 'ggg' , 'ggg'}
out = str2double([a])
whos out

In the command window:

a = 
    'xxx'    'xxx'    '24'    '63'    'ggg'    'ggg'
out =
   NaN   NaN    24    63   NaN   NaN
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes

    out       1x6                48  double