#### 6.2.2 Indexing Cell Arrays

As shown in the introductory example elements can be inserted from cell arrays using the ``{`' and ``}`' operators. Besides the change of operators, indexing works for cell arrays like for multidimensional arrays. As an example, all the rows of the first and third column of a cell array can be set to `0` with the following code

         c{:, [1, 3]} = 0;

Accessing values in a cell array is, however, different from the same operation for numerical arrays. Accessing a single element of a cell array is very similar to numerical arrays, for example

         element = c{1, 2};

This will, however, not work when accessing multiple elements of a cell array, because it might not be possible to represent all elements with a single variable as is the case with numerical arrays.

Accessing multiple elements of a cell array with the ``{`' and ``}`' operators will result in a comma-separated list (see Comma Separated Lists) of all the requested elements as discussed later.

One distinction between ``{`' and ``(`' to index cell arrays is in the deletion of elements from the cell array. In a similar manner to a numerical array the ``()`' operator can be used to delete elements from the cell array. The ``{}`' operator however will remove the elements of the cell array, but not delete the space for them. For example

         x = {"1", "2"; "3", "4"};
         x{1, :} = []
         => x =
               {
                 [1,1] = [](0x0)
                 [2,1] = 3
                 [1,2] = [](0x0)
                 [2,2] = 4
               }

         x(1, :) = []
         => x =
               {
                 [1,1] = 3
                 [1,2] = 4
               }