Get the first value from an array of cell cells

Question

I have an array of cells of arrays of cells ...

    data = {1x16}
           {1x16}
           {1x16}

and I'm trying to get the first value from each of the cells. However when i do

     data{:}(1)

I get an error

      Bad cell reference operation.

First of all, is there a good reason why I am not allowed to do this? And secondly, is there a way around this?

Hooray! Ben

Answer 1

For an array of cells 1D-

first_vals = arrayfun(@(n) data{n}(1),1:numel(data))

This should work in the general case -

first_vals = reshape(arrayfun(@(n) data{n}(1),1:numel(data)),size(data))

Answer 2

I would prefer to do this using a simple loop:

For example, this will work:

data = [{[1:16]}; {[17:32]}; {[33:48]}];
b= []
for i=1:length(data)
b = [b data{i,1}(1)];
end