Put in alphabet order a structure only by one field

Hi, i have a struct called "users" that contains fields such as "name","username","password".I want do display all the structure's data but it has to be alphabettically organized by name. How can i do this using sort?

[Stephen23]

@José Pereira: which of these do you have:

1. a non-scalar structure with scalar fields (or char vectors), or
2. a scalar structure with non-scalar fields?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

[~, sortidx] = sort({users.name});
users = users(sortidx);

[Jos (10584)]

+1 No need at all for conversions to tables etc...

[Stephen23]

Assumes a non-scalar structure... which the question does not specify.

[Walter Roberson]

True. If it is a scalar structure with cell arrays of character vectors, and will all fields having the same number of entries (but fields possibly being different data types from each other)

[~, sortidx] = sort(users.name);
users = structfun(@(F) F(sortidx), users, 'uniform', 0);

Answer 2

[Harish Ramachandran]

Hello,

Unfortunately, there is no direct way to sort a structure according to one of the field. The steps below involve transforming the structure into a table, perform the ' sortrows' operation and reverting back to a structure. I have also attached a couple of relevant links which you can check out.

• Create a predefined structure - users

 users = struct('name', {'Noah', 'Liam', 'Mason', 'Jacob', 'William', 'Ethan', 'James', 'Alexander'},...
                'username', {'NH', 'LM', 'MN', 'JB', 'WM', 'EN', 'JS', 'AR'},...
                'password', {'NH147', 'LM258', 'MN@234', 'JB369', 'WM1991', 'EN4567', 'JS#345', 'AR/*-789'})

• Convert the structure into a table.

user_Table = struct2table(users);

• You can view the contents of the table using the ' disp' function:

disp(user_Table)

• Sort the table with the key being the 'name' column.

user_Table = sortrows(user_Table,'name');

• Revert back to a structure

users = table2struct(user_Table);

You can also check out the links below:

1. sortrows - Sort rows of matrix or table
2. Advantages of using Tables
3. Related question in MATLAB Answers repository
4. File Exchange Blog - Sorting Structure Arrays based on Fields
5. Printing the contents of a structure onto the command window