Very simple question about strings

Hello all

I have a cell containing stings something like this:

A={'SI1','SI12','SI13','SI2'};

I have to arrange these strings either in ascending order or in descending based on the numbers they are having. Can anyone please guide?

Regards

[Stephen23]

You can simply use my FEX submission natsort, which performs a natural order sort on a cell array of strings:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/34464-customizable-natural-order-sort

>> A = {'SI1','SI12','SI13','SI2'};
>> natsort(A)
ans = 
  'SI1'   'SI2'   'SI12'    'SI13'

Answer 1

[David Young]

"According to the numbers" is ambiguous.

This sorts the strings in ascending order, making the digit in position 3 more significant than the digit in position 4, etc.:

Asorted = sort(A);

Your example is already sorted by this criterion.

This, on the other hand, makes the last digit the least significant, regardless of how many digits there are. It assumes that there are always 2 characters to ignore at the start:

nums = cellfun(@(s) str2double(s(3:end)), A);
[~, indexes] = sort(nums);
Asorted = A(indexes);

Answer 2

[Honglei Chen]

I think this utility can help

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/10959-sort-nat--natural-order-sort