Swapping entries in column of table

I've the following table and I want to swap the entries

 tbl = table({'1', '2'; '2', '3'; '2', '3'; '3', '4'},'VariableNames', {'multicol'});
 i_pts = 2;
 for i = i_pts
    searchval = num2str(i);
    temp_tbl = tbl(any(strcmp(tbl.multicol, searchval), 2), :);
 end
temp_tbl

Obtained output:

    multicol   
    ______________

    {'1'}    {'2'}
    {'2'}    {'3'}
    {'2'}    {'3'}

I'd like to obtain the following from the above output.

       multicol   
    ______________

    {'2'}    {'1'}
    {'2'}    {'3'}
    {'2'}    {'3'}

Any suggestion on how on this can be done?

[Adam Danz]

Deepa Maheshvare's answer moved here as a comment

Sorry for not being clear. The rule is if the value saved in variable, i_pts, is present in first column of the multicolum table no swapping is required. If the value is present in second column then swapping is performed. For instance, in the example posted in the first answer to this question 2 is present in second column in the first row. So swapping is required. In the second and third rows 2 is present in column 1 of the table. So no swapping is required.

Likewise in the second post, 3 is the value stored in i_pts. First two rows of the table contain 3 in the second column. So swapping is required.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

I'm not sure why you're using string characters instead of numbers but I'll assume you have a reason for that. Here's how to identify the rows of tbl.multicol where the second column contains the character representation of i_pts (which is numeric). Then flip those rows.

rowsToSwitch = strcmp(tbl.multicol(:,2),num2str(i_pts)); %logical vector identifying rows to flip
tbl.multicol(rowsToSwitch,:) = fliplr(tbl.multicol(rowsToSwitch,:)); % Flip those rows

Answer 2

[dpb]

% first build a more workable table arrangement...
t=table(str2double(tbl.multicol),'VariableNames',{'array'});
t=t(1:3,:)
t =
  3×1 table
    array 
    ______
    1    2
    2    3
    2    3
>>

% Rearrange rows with match of second in first column
ix=ismember(t.array(:,2),t.array(:,1));
t.array(ix,:)=flip(t.array(ix,:));

results in

>> t =
  3×1 table
    array 
    ______
    2    1
    2    3
    2    3
>> 

[Deepa Maheshvare]

Thanks a lot. However, the above doesn't work for the following table

 tbl = table({'2', '3'; '2', '3'; '3', '4'},'VariableNames', {'multicol'});
i_pts = 3; % In the previous input i_pts = 2 so the expected output has 2 in the 1st column

Expected output:

 t =
  3×1 table
    array 
    ______
    3    2
    3    2
    3    4

[dpb]

You haven't clearly defined the rule behind the desire...

[Adam Danz]

I also have no idea what the rule is.