Use CELLFUN

%# find empty cells
emptyCells = cellfun(@isempty,a);
%# remove empty cells
a(emptyCells) = [];

Note: a(i)==[] won't work. If you want to know whether the the i-th cell is empty, you have to use curly brackets to access the content of the cell. Also, ==[] evaluates to empty, instead of true/false, so you should use the command isempty instead. In short: a(i)==[] should be rewritten as isempty(a{i}).

a=cell(1,2,3)

x = {1,[],[],[]}; find(~cellfun(@isempty,x))

It is not clear what you mean by a "list of cells". Can you provide some code that illustrates what types of variables you are using? For example, by "cells", do you mean cell arrays? Without more details, it is hard to answer your question, but there are functions isempty() and cellfun() that might be useful to you. Edited in response to your comments: >> cellfun(@isempty,namelist) does what I think you want. For example: namelist = cell(2,6) namelist{1} = 'abc' namelist{12} = 3 cellfun(@isempty,namelist)

It will depend on exactly what you mean by "empty", but if your cell array is named _c_, then this command c(:) = [] will make c into an empty cell array, and so will c = {}

Depends on what you want to achieve really. I guess the simplest method would be:

repmat({''},n,m);

The correct version of the first way is a = [a, {''}]. In order to concatenate to a cell array with the [] notation, all of the items being joined must be cell arrays. I'm honestly a bit surprised it doesn't give you an error when you try a = [a,''], and I don't think I understand the output that it does produce. (Edit: This is wrong, Matlab allows concatenation of non-cells to cell arrays. I just has some strange rules involved in doing so. I would suggest you avoid making use of this. See my reply below.) I like to avoid the a{2} method of extending arrays (equally true for a(2), as I don't like that it involves addressing a member that is beyond the end of the array. It has its uses though. Otherwise, there is no "correct" way.

>>c = {[]}; >>class(c{1}) ans = double >>isempty(c{1}) ans = 1 Or if you really want to be specific: c = {double.empty(0)};

x = [cell(4,1) num2cell(rand(4))] Or maybe you want x=num2cell(rand(4)) x(:,1)={[]}

Short answer is, "you can't". A double array cannot have an empty element; it is either empty or full. A cell array is the only way in which I see you can do this other than, perhaps you could cobble something together with sparse maybe??? The only alternative I see in an ordinary array would be to replace the empty cell with NaN or some other indicator value. ses1_results{cellfun(@isempty,ses1_results)}=nan; res=cell2mat(ses1_results); res(res==0)=[]; returns res = 1.1920 0.5678 1.0000 NaN 1.0000 >> Or, of course, following the comment; you've already got a cell array; just remove the cells that are zero. >> ses1_results(~cellfun(@(v)isequal(v,0),ses1_results)) ans = 5×1 cell array {[ 1.1920]} {[ 0.5678]} {[ 1]} {0×0 double} {[ 1]} >>

To remove empty cell array contents (title of your question) : R(~cellfun('isempty',R))