Converting first column unique values to number

I have a table that I need to use for another function.

Currently the table is setup as

Base1,x,y,z
Base1,x,y,z
Building2,x,y,z
Building2,x,y,z
Complex3,x,y,z
Complex3,x,y,z
Complex3,x,y,z

What I would like to do is rename the first column if they have unique names so Base1 would switch to 1, Building2 switches to 2 ect...

Is there an easy way to rename all of the first column based on if the values are unique or not?

[dpb]

Keeping the same number or just 1:NoUnique values?

[Bewler]

There isn't normally a number in the first colum, its actually A,B,C. I just want to convert any similar values in column 1 to numbers starting at 1:n.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

[~,~,u]=unique(yourTable{:,1},'stable'); 
yourTable{:,1}=num2cell(u)

[Bewler]

Matt, this converted the first column to a cell. I can't seem to convert this back to a double...

The numbers are correct 1-3 however I can't use the numbers now for my next function and it seems you can't convert these back. I tried

yourTable(:,1) = cell2mat(yourTable{:,1}) however it says the right hand side of an assignment into a table must be another table or a cell array.

[Stephen23]

Rather than converting the double array to a cell array of scalar numerics and then converting that back to a duoble array, just don't use num2cell in the first place.

[Matt J]

@Bewler,

To replace the column with variables of a different type, you need to use dot-indexing,

[~,~,u]=unique(yourTable{:,1},'stable'); 
yourTable.Var1=u;

where 'Var1' is the variable name for the column in the table.

[Bewler]

Stephen. The issue is we have to convert due to the original input of Var1 of the table as a cell and we can't directly overwrite the variable with a double. I'm not familiar with dot-indexing but I'll explore this as well. Not too familiar with tables and why we can't easily overwrite the cell as a double.