How to convert one column of a table into numeric data type corresponding to the other column of the same table?

I have the table as shown below:

I need to calculate a multiple comparison test, which includes the means plots for each genre. When I try to apply its process, they say that the genre (string) and runtime (int) are of different types so cant be processed. I want to convert the genre column to numeric w.r.t the runtime column. E.g Action = 1, comedy = 2, Animation = 3 and Biography = 4. Can someone please guide me how to do this? I am stuck at here. Thanks alot in advance,

Answer 1

[Wan Ji]

If you have a table T with field names genre and runtime, then

genre = {'ab','a','a','o','abo'}';
runtime = [11,12,13,14,45]';
T = table(genre, runtime);
[Q,ia,ic] = unique(T{:,'genre'});
Q = categorical(Q); % this is the categorical of genre
genre = ic;
T(:,'genre') = [];
T{:,'genre'} = ic;

[Haider Ali]

Its working. Thanks alot. you are life saviour !

[Wan Ji]

So I also need your encouragement, please acecept my answer if it worked@Haider Ali

[Wan Ji]

:) happy that helped you

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

This is perhaps slightly more clear:

>> genre = {'ab','a','a','o','abo'}';
>> runtime = [11,12,13,14,45]';
>> T = table(genre, runtime);
>> T.genre = categorical(T.genre);
>> T.genreID = double(T.genre)
T =
5×3 table
genre    runtime    genreID
_____    _______    _______
ab        11          2   
a         12          1   
a         13          1   
o         14          4   
abo       45          3