Sorting a cell containing character vectors

I'm trying to sort a cell of character vectors using the function

sort()

The input cell of character vectors are as follows:

 A={ 3-aaa,
  2-bbb,
  1-abc,
  10-acb,
  21- cab}

sort(A)

The output is:

    1-abc
    10-acb
    2-bbb
    21- cab
    3-aaa

How do I numerically sort it as

1-abc
2-bbb
3-aaa
10-acb
21- cab

Answer 1

[Andrei Bobrov]

A={ '3-aaa'
  '2-bbb'
  '1-abc'
  '10-acb'
  '21- cab'}

[~,ii] = sort(str2double(regexp(A,'\d+','match','once')));
out = A(ii)

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Look in the File Exchange for "natural sort"

Answer 3

[Mark Fajet]

Since the problem is that you want to sort numerically, but the sort function sees these as character vectors, you're going to want to parse out the numbers from each cell containing character vectors. Using cellfun, it can be done. Obtaining the numbers from each cell can be done like so:

cellfun(@(B)str2num(B(1:find(B=='-')-1)),A,'un',0)

After this, you'd want to do something similar to this example

In the end, your code may look like this:

A={ '3-aaa',
  '2-bbb',
  '1-abc',
  '10-acb',
  '21- cab'}
num_cells = cellfun(@(B)str2num(B(1:find(B=='-')-1)),A,'un',0)
nums = cell2mat(num_cells)
[numsSorted, i] = sort(nums)
A(i)