Suppose I have a cell array x and an integer array y:
x = {'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'pear'};
y = [2 4 3 1];
In fact, y represents indices of x. I want to now create a cell array z with the elements of x reordered as specified by the order of these indices. This would give me:
z = {'orange', 'pear', 'banana', 'apple'};
Can I do this in one line without having to loop through each element and place it in z in turn?
You can use an array as an array subscript:
x = {'apple', 'orange', 'banana', 'pear'};
y = [2 4 3 1];
z = x(y);
This code assigns creates a cell array z that contains the elements from x, that are selected by the indices y, in the order of the indices. (that is the basics of MATLAB subscripting; other methods of indexing are linear and logical, see Mathworks site for details).