Resorting Rows in a Table with Panel Data

Hello,

I exported a table from Excel to Matlab. The file contains variables in panel data format, sorted by Country and Year. My time period stretches from 1990-2017. I had initially constructed the table from 1995-2017, and then at the end, I'd added the data from 1990-1994, again sorted by Country and Year (I did not need these time periods initially). So it is this way now:

Country 1 1995

Country 1 1996

...

Country 180 2017

Country 1 1990

Country 1 1991

Country 1 1992

Country 1 1993

Country 1 1994

Country 2 1990

....

Is it possible for me to rearrange the data in a way so that the entire dataset runs from 1990-2017, by Country and Year?

Regards,

Saunok

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

See sortrows.

If there are any problems implementing that function, show us what you've got and we can help straighten it out.

[Saunok Chakrabarty]

Hi Adam,

This worked perfectly, thank you!

Would you also know how to remove rows from a table containing a specific string? Eg I want to delete rows that contain the country "Zambia."

Regards,

Saunok

[Saunok Chakrabarty]

It worked when I used ismember:

str2={'A', 'Z'};

T(ismember(T.Country, str2), :)=[ ]

[Adam Danz]

Saunok Chakrabarty you're absolutely correct. I forgot that inputs must be the same size or one can be scalar with strcmp/i. Sorry to have mislead you. I'll remove those comments to prevent future visitors from getting confused.

To make up for my mistake I'll offer one improvement of your otherwise perfectly fine solution to use ismember. Most of the time string matches are not case sensitive but with ismember, "Zambia" will not match with "zambia".

ismember({'Afghanistan','Zambia'}, 'zambia')

ans = 1×2 logical array
   0   0

To allow for case sensitivity, force all strings to upper or lower case:

ismember(lower({'Afghanistan','Zambia'}), lower('zambia'))

ans = 1×2 logical array
   0   1

[Saunok Chakrabarty]

Hi Adam,

Thanks a ton for this suggestion. I'm actually new to Matlab so this helps iron out my confusions.

Regards,

Saunok