title: How to maniplulate data in one array if conditions are met in another array?
body: <p>I have an array of numeric data, and I have another with the string headers of that data. these two arrays match in terms of what header goes with which column. I want to write an if statement that says for each column in the headers array, if the string value in column 1 for example equals 'header1', then take column 1 from the data array and multiply all values by 10 (or apply some function to the data in each cell). if it equals a different string do something else, and then move on to the next string in the header array and repeat the process.</p>
  
  <p>Here is what I have so far. names is the array with 1 column and some string headers and Data is the new data file, while dataToRead is the original data array. there must be a betetr way to do this, I might have anwyhere from 1 to 20 formulas/headers so making a million if else statements seems wrong. 
  Somewhere down the line I would like to have a repository of formulas that can be applied for each string case so that I can have it cycle through instead of having 20 if statements. is that possible? </p>
  
  <p>This code seems to work just fine, but it cant be the best way to go about this. </p>
  
  <pre><code>for n=1:length(names)
  if names{:,n}=='header1'
  Data(:,n)=3*DataToRead(:,n+1); %I have a time stamp in column 1 i dont want to act upon
  else
  if names{:,n}=='header2'
  Data(:,n)=4*DataToRead(:,n+1)
  else
  if names{:,n}=='header4'
  Data(:,n)=0*DataToRead(:,n+1)
  end 
  end
  end
  end
  </code></pre>