Sorting a table with strings and numbers

Hi All,

So far, I am having great difficulty trying organize an imported excel spreadsheet as a table that contains both strings and numeric values. How do I go about sorting character strings while still retaining the numerical values?

Thanks!

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Use readtable() to read in the workbook

T = readtable(fullXlsFileName);

Then use sortrows() to sort the table based on the column with strings in it. Let's say that the column with strings is the first column, like in the example below. Then you'd just do:

LastName = {'Smith';'Johnson';'Williams';'Jones';'Brown'};
Age = [38;43;38;40;49];
Height = [71;69;64;67;64];
Weight = [176;163;131;133;119];
BloodPressure = [124 93; 109 77; 125 83; 117 75; 122 80];
% Create a table, T, as a container for the workspace variables.
T = table(LastName, Age,Height,Weight,BloodPressure)
% Sort rows by last name.
sortedTable = sortrows(T, 1)

In the command window, you'll see the unsorted table first, followed by the sorted table:

T = 
     LastName     Age    Height    Weight    BloodPressure
    __________    ___    ______    ______    _____________
    'Smith'       38     71        176       124     93   
    'Johnson'     43     69        163       109     77   
    'Williams'    38     64        131       125     83   
    'Jones'       40     67        133       117     75   
    'Brown'       49     64        119       122     80   
sortedTable = 
     LastName     Age    Height    Weight    BloodPressure
    __________    ___    ______    ______    _____________
    'Brown'       49     64        119       122     80   
    'Johnson'     43     69        163       109     77   
    'Jones'       40     67        133       117     75   
    'Smith'       38     71        176       124     93   
    'Williams'    38     64        131       125     83

[Aldrich To]

Thanks Image Analyst! Resolved my problem!