Sort a matrix with respect to a date.

Hi experts, is there a way to sort variables in a matrix based on date? For instance, here I want to first sort the variables based on column 3 (0s first then 1s) and then based on date (earliest dates first). See for an example below.

list = 

      {3436x1 cell}    [3436x11 char]  [3436x1 double]

      'BG4704_01'   03-Jan-2015  0
      'BG4705_01'       02-Jan-2015  1
      'BG4706_01'  21-Dec-2014  0
      'BG4707_01'  23-Oct-1913  1
      'BG4708_01'  05-Jul-1913  1

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Probably the easiest way is to simply convert those date strings to date numbers, which can then be sorted together with the binary values:

% original data in X
X{1} = {'BG4704_01';'BG4705_01';'BG4706_01';'BG4707_01';'BG4708_01'};
X{2} = ['03-Jan-2015';'02-Jan-2015';'21-Dec-2014';'23-Oct-1913';'05-Jul-1913'];
X{3} = [0;1;0;1;1];
% create numeric matrix Y and sort based on binary then dates: 
Y(:,2) = datenum(X{2},'dd-mmm-yyyy');
Y(:,1) = X{3};
[~,idx] = sortrows(Y)
% rearrange data inside cell vector X
for k = 1:numel(X)
    X{k} = X{k}(idx,:);
end

[Marty Dutch]

Thanks a lot, Stephen. This is really helpful!