Question

I have a map containers.Map(array1, array2) that I would like to sort according to the values in array1. There is a fairly large amount of data contained in the arrays (~50,000 elements in each).

Is there a simple way to do this, perhaps using some built-in MATLAB feature?

Environment is MATLAB 2012. array1 is a character array.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Since a container.Map is a dictionary or hash table implementation you cannot define some ordering of the elements within the data structure itself. However, by default MATLAB sorts keys and values (according to keys) when you query for them:

keySet =   {'Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr'};
valueSet = [327.2, 368.2, 197.6, 178.4];
mapObj = containers.Map(keySet,valueSet);

>> keys(mapObj)
ans = 
    'Apr'    'Feb'    'Jan'    'Mar'

>> values(mapObj)
ans = 
    [178.4000]    [368.2000]    [327.2000]    [197.6000]