String searching (contains, strfind) in MATLAB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

String Searching with contains and strfind in MATLAB

📖 Scenario: You work in a library and need to find books that mention certain keywords in their titles.

🎯 Goal: Build a MATLAB program that searches for a keyword in a list of book titles using contains and strfind.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a cell array of book titles

Create a keyword variable to search for

Use contains to find which titles include the keyword

Use strfind to find the position of the keyword in each title

Display the results clearly

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Searching for keywords in book titles helps librarians quickly find relevant books for readers.

💼 Career

Knowing how to search strings is useful in data analysis, text processing, and software development.

1

Create a list of book titles

Create a cell array called bookTitles with these exact strings: 'Matlab Basics', 'Advanced Programming', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', and 'Deep Learning'.

MATLAB

% Create the cell array bookTitles with the given titles
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a cell array of strings in MATLAB.

2

Set the keyword to search

Create a variable called keyword and set it to the string 'Learning'.

MATLAB

bookTitles = {'Matlab Basics', 'Advanced Programming', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning'};
% Create the keyword variable with the value 'Learning'
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'Learning' to the variable keyword.

3

Find titles containing the keyword using contains and strfind

Use contains with bookTitles and keyword to create a logical array called hasKeyword. Then use a for loop with index i from 1 to length of bookTitles to find the position of keyword in each title using strfind. Store the result in a cell array called positions.

MATLAB

bookTitles = {'Matlab Basics', 'Advanced Programming', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning'};
keyword = 'Learning';
% Use contains to find titles with the keyword
% Use a for loop with i to find positions using strfind
% Your code here

Need a hint?

contains returns a logical array. Use strfind inside a loop to get positions.

4

Display the search results

Use a for loop with index i from 1 to length of bookTitles to print each title. If hasKeyword(i) is true, print 'Found at position(s):' followed by the positions from positions{i}. Otherwise, print 'Keyword not found'.

MATLAB

bookTitles = {'Matlab Basics', 'Advanced Programming', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning'};
keyword = 'Learning';
hasKeyword = contains(bookTitles, keyword);
positions = cell(1, length(bookTitles));
for i = 1:length(bookTitles)
    positions{i} = strfind(bookTitles{i}, keyword);
end
% Print each title and search result
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use fprintf to print each title and the search results. Use mat2str to convert positions to string.