Question

I have 2 columns of data imported from using textscan. The data looks like this where U is undetect and D is detect

mydata=

.51 U
.57 D
.48 U
.47 D

 my data = [4x1 double]    [4x1 char]

I want to sort the data by the first column and so the data would look like this

.47  D
.48  U
.51  U    
.57  D

I would like to preserve the cell structure so that the following command to assign logical value still hold true:

c = zeros(size(mydata,1),1); % preallocate empty matrix 

c = mydata{2} == 'U';
for i = 1:size(mydata,1)
      curValue = mydata{i,2};
      data{i,3} =  ~isempty(curValue) && ischar(curValue) && strcmp(curValue ,'U');
end

I read about sortrows but the function is used to sort matrix containing just numbers.

Does anyone have a solution for sorting arrays with a mixture of numbers and characters.

Answer 1

You can SORT by one vector and apply the sorting index to another vector.

[mydata{1},idx] = sort(mydata{1});
mydata{2} =  mydata{2}(idx);