Matlab: howto convert cell array of structs into struct array using colon operator?

Question

Assume there is a cell array initialized with the following struct values.

% Phone book
phone_record{1} = struct('name', 'Bob', 'phone', '1233323');
phone_record{2} = struct('name', 'Mike', 'phone', '3245524');

% How to make such or similar one-liner work?
% phonebook(:) = phone_record{:}

% Expected:
% phonebook(1).name = 'Bob';
% phonebook(1).phone= '1233323';
% phonebook(2).name = 'Mike';
% phonebook(2).phone = '3245524';

Is it indeed possible to accomplish this w/o using cell2struct or for-loop indexing? Can one use deal or similar?

Note: if you don't know the solution please spare the "best-practice" hinting or similar "hand-waving".

Answer 1

You can use cell2mat :

cell2mat(phone_record)

ans =

1x2 struct array with fields:

name
phone

Answer 2

Well,

phone_book = cat( 2, phone_record{ :})

does indeed use the colon operator, and will give the same result as cell2mat(phone_record).

Another non-colon solution is

cellfun(@(x) x, phone_record).'

with the benefit of transforming the structs on the fly, for example adding (missing) fields. Here we use the idendity, of course.