sortrows command doesn't sort numbers properly

Hello all,

I've been working on a GUI for someone and it involves sorting an excel table using a column. After using the sortrows command on a column I isolated from the table, I noticed it didn't sort the numbers as I intended. This is the most notable example I could find, where 37 and 376183 were misplaced. Anyone know why the sortrows command does this and how I can fix it to where the two numbers should be in their proper places?

'36032'
'36045'
'36049'
'36146'
'36147'
'36149'
'36413'
'36456'
'36478'
'36558'
'36666'
'36696'
'36704'
'37'
'37056'
'37073'
'37084'
'37268'
'37351'
'37472'
'37581'
'376183'
'37663'
'37701'
'37742'

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Before you sort them, convert them from strings to double-precision numerical values with the str2double function. As they are now, it’s sorting as strings.

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

I see no numbers. What I see are char arrays whose characters happen to be digits. As with any string, matlab sort these alphabetically. The same way that 'aaa' comes before 'ab' in the dictionary, '111' comes before '12'.

If you want sortrows to treat these things as numbers, then convert them to numbers with str2double.

Answer 3

[Sean de Wolski]

sort(double(string(c)))

Where c is your cell array. (String requires 16b or newer)