how to sort data

I have two column of datas

COLUMN1   COLUMN2
5              R
3              E
1              A
4              P

i NEED THE OUTPUT AS

1    A
3    E
4    P
5    R

CAN ANYONE TELL HOW TO PROCESS PLEASE

[Jan]

Pat, please explain the input and output more descriptive. Do you have an ASCII or Excel file with two columns, or a matrix with two columns, or two column vectors? Is the output a string, another file, some characters, different variables?

Take the time to read: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/797-how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-for-matlab-answers

[Jan]

@Pat: If I'm looking on your other 30 questions, it seems, like you are not interested in answering questions for clarifications. Answering your questions would be much easier, if you take the time to explain all necessary details. Almost the half of your question do not get any answer, and you could accept two answers only. I recommended the standard usage of upper/lower-case characters before, but without impressing you.

If you do not use this forum for an efficient exchange of information, why do you use it at all?

[Jan]

@Pat: Now the format is much nicer to read.

Answer 1

[Jan]

If "COLUMN1 COLUMN2 5 R 3 E 1 A 4 P" means this:

data = {5, 'R'; ...
        3, 'E'; ...
        1, 'A'; ...
        4, 'P'};

Then you can sort it this way:

[dummy, index] = sort([data{:, 1}]);
sorted = data(index, :);

[Jamie Smith]

how can this be done for much larger excel file that contains words in the first column? I need to arrange the table so that the values in the 8th column are in ascending order but in doing so keep their respective names in the first column?

Answer 2

[Andrei Bobrov]

data = reshape({5 'R' 3 'E' 1 'A' 4 'P'},2,[])'
out = sortrows(data,1)

or

out = reshape(sortrows(data,1)',1,[])

if

data(:,1)=cellfun(@num2str,data(:,1),'un',0)
out = sortrows(data,1)

[Jan]

@Andrei: You are bold. +1

[Pat]

thank you sir can u please can u tell how to do it in descending order please

[Andrei Bobrov]

out = sortrows(data,-1)