How to create struct of cell arrays

Hi all,

I have found i can create a struct of empty cell arrays as follows (in R2018b):

struct("a", {cell(0)}, "b", {cell(0)})

I was wondering if this is the most "MATLABic" way of doing that and why the following does not work:

struct("a", {}, "b", {})

or

struct("a", cell(0), "b", cell(0))

Thanks!!

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

"I was wondering if this is the most "MATLABic" way of doing that"

Yes.

"...and why the following does not work"

Because by definition of STRUCT() the outermost cell array determines the size of the structure array (and are therefore removed). Any remaining nested cells remain as the field data.

Otherwise there would be no simple way to define non-scalar structures using STRUCT().

Note that STRUCT() actually does "work" exactly as documented: "If value is a nonscalar cell array, then s is a structure array with the same dimensions as value. Each element of s contains the corresponding element of value. For example, s = struct('x',{'a','b'}) returns s(1).x = 'a' and s(2).x = 'b'."

See: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/struct.html

[ErikJ GiesenLoo]

ok. makes sense - it just looked very strange