"Sam P." <kmj.nasa@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:mv8n6f$728$1@newscl01ah.mathworks.com...
> I have a 1xA cell array called Names that contains 50 unique strings (e.g.
> 'Knee', 'Ankle', etc.). I also have a 1xA double array called Values that
> contains a single value associated with each Name.
>
> My ultimate goal is to sort the Values list and display a table that shows
> each Name and Value, sorted in descending order according to Value.
>
> From my review of the Mathworks documentation, it seems that associating
> each name to its value using a structure may be the best option.
I would instead SORT your Values vector (with two outputs), use the second
output to reorder Names, and then directly create the TABLE using the two
variables.
> However, all of the examples on the structure documentation page show very
> simple examples where each element of the structure is manually specified.
> In my case, this will not be possible, because in my code the value of A
> can vary between runs, so manually listing out the Names when creating a
> structure will not work.
>
> I have been able to sort the Values list using the sort() function (and
> the 'descend' option), but using this method, I lose the association
> between the corresponding Name value.
See above.
> I have played around with trying to populate a structure using a loop, but
> have not had success with this method.
>
> Is there a way to:
> ~ 1) create a structure that pairs up each Name with its
> associated Value?
Yes.
> and then ~ 2) sort the resulting structure in descending order
> according to Value?
Not easily. If you have a scalar struct array with two fields, Names and
Values, that each contain one of your two arrays you could sort the Values
field and then reorder the Names field correspondingly. But that's just what
I suggested above, with the added complication of an extra layer of
indexing. If you have a nonscalar struct array where each struct has fields
Names and Values, that's just a more complicated version of the first
approach. And if you have a cell array where each cell contains a scalar
struct array with each scalar struct containing a different field, that's
the most complicated of all.
--
Steve Lord
slord@mathworks.com
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