Sorting a cell array rows according to string column alphabetically

Hi everyone, a matlab beginner question :

I have a cell array like the following:

I want to sort the array rows alphabetically according to the first column. (and I want the first row to stay at the top as it is the header row)

I have tried to use sort and sortrows but I am getting the error : Error using sort Input argument must be a cell array of character vectors.

How can I sort this cell array?

Thanks

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

Assuming your cell array is namens C:

C = {'c1' 'c2','c3' ; 'c' 1 2 ; 'a' 2 3 ; 'b' 3 4}
[~, ix] = sort(C(2:end,1))   % sort the first column from 2nd row onwards and get the indices
C(2:end,:) = C(ix+1,:)       % do not forget to add a 1 :)

[amonasro]

My cell array has the name output.

the declaration is like this: output = cell(100,14);

here is the error I am getting :

Error using sort Input argument must be a cell array of character vectors.

Error in myfunc (line 75) [~, ix] = sort(output(2:end,1));

[Jos (10584)]

apparently some cells in the first column are not character vectors! You can check this using cellfun

tf = cellfun(@ischar, output(2:end,1))

What do want to do with these cells (rows)?

[amonasro]

the result of cellfun : K>> cellfun(@ischar, output(2:end,1))

ans =

13×1 logical array

   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0
   0

But the assignments are like for example :

     output{2,1} = {'lorem'};
or

     fid = fopen(inputArg1, 'r');
     tline = fgetl(fid);
     C = strsplit(tline);
     output{1, 4} = C(1);

What do you think is the problem here with the types?

[Jos (10584)]

the content of the cells are not character arrays, but a cell containing a character array! See the differences between:

C1(1) = {'aaa'} 
C2{1} = {'bbb'} 
C3{1} =  'ccc'