Assigning values to a level from non-numerical arrays

Lets say I had two non-numerical arrays which had a few different but equal number of levels

example:

getlevels(price)
ans = 

     low      med      high      vhigh 

 getlevels(acceptability)
ans = 

     unacc      acc      good      vgood

and I wanted to assign values to each of these levels.

For example:

low = 1 med = 2 high = 3 vhigh = 4

unacc = 1 acc = 2 good = 3 vood = 4

so that I could compare both of these on a graph.

How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

I would do this with the ismember command:

[tf,loc] = ismember(price,{'low','med','high','vhigh'});

The first output will tell you if the value in price is in your list, and the second index will give the location in that vector.

It is also possible to do something similar with the unique command.