Need help to search a structure with user I/P

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Hi,
I have a data structure (tempExp) that looks like the following:
tempExp.size --> This is a string
tempExp.color --> This is a string
tempExp.data --> Usually a 1x2000 double
Right now I ask the user make "size" and "color" selections in a gui popupmenu which I save as string variables called "size" and "color". What I would like to do is use that information to select the appropriate tempExp.data field and eventually use that to make plots, or further processing, etc.
For example, user selects "orange" and "medium". How do I use that information to search the tempExp structure that contains the color "orange" and size "medium" and then access/return the corresponding tempExp.data for those user selected fields?
Thank you for your time!
  2 Comments
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 2 Sep 2014
DO NOT SAVE IN A VARIABLE CALLED size!!! You can have a structure field called size, but not a whole string variable called "size" or you will blow away the built-in size() function.

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Accepted Answer

Guillaume
Guillaume on 2 Sep 2014
Assuming that tempExp is an array of struct
sizes = {tempExp(:).size};
colors = {tempExp(:).color};
matchstruct = tempExp(strcmp(sizes, size) & strcmp(colors, color));
if ~isempty(matchstruct)
data = matchstruct.data; %assume that there is at most one match.
%do something with data
end
  4 Comments
Guillaume
Guillaume on 11 Sep 2014
If there is more than one match, then matchstruct will be an array of the structures that match. You can then do whatever you want with this array such as:
for match = 1 : numel(matchstruct)
data = matchstruct(match).data;
...
end
R J
R J on 11 Sep 2014
Ah, ok I see. This was very helpful. Thank you again!

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