MATLAB Programming

Regular Expressions
Make regexprep more specific to your needs by specifying any of a number
of options with the command. See the regexprep reference page for more
information on these options.
Handling Multiple Strings
You can use any of the MATLAB regular expression functions with cell arrays
of strings as well as with single strings. Any or all of the input parameters
(the string, expression, or replacement string) can be a cell array of strings.
The regexp function requires that the string and expression arrays have
the same number of elements. The regexprep function requires that the
expression and replacement arrays have the same number of elements. (The
cell arrays do not have to have the same shape.)
Whenever either input argument in a call to regexp, or the first input
argument in a call to regexprep function is a cell array, all output values are
cell arrays of the same size.
This section covers the following topics:
• “Finding a Single Pattern in Multiple Strings” on page 3-69
• “Finding Multiple Patterns in Multiple Strings” on page 3-70
• “Replacing Multiple Strings” on page 3-71
Finding a Single Pattern in Multiple Strings
The example shown here uses the regexp function on a cell array of strings
cstr. It searches each string of the cell array for consecutive matching letters
(e.g., 'oo'). The function returns a cell array of the same size as the input
array. Each row of the return array contains the indices for which there was a
match against the input cell array.
Here is the input cell array:
cstr = { ...
'Whose woods these are I think I know.' ; ...
'His house is in the village though;' ; ...
'He will not see me stopping here' ; ...
'To watch his woods fill up with snow.'};
3-69