Sort cell array based on 2 columns with date and time (strings)

Hello, i have a cell array 395*8 cell.

Columns 3 and 4 have

'01/20/2014'  '19:22:05.0120'
'01/15/2014'  '19:22:20.8020'
'01/17/2014'  '20:01:26.0630'
'01/16/2014'  '20:04:21.1260'

and so on.

How can i sort them based firstly on column 3 and then column 4.

sortrows did not work

sortrows(cellname,[3 4]) because i have string values.

[Stephen23]

Actually the easiest solution is to use ISO 8601 date strings to store your dates, and then you can simply use sort or sortrows, because a lexicographical sort will put them into the correct date order. It really is that easy!

You can use my FEX submissions datestr8601 and |datenum8601 to easily convert between ISO 8601 dates and MATLAB serial date numbers or date vectors.

Answer 1

[Andrei Bobrov]

[~,ii] = sort(datenum(strcat(cellname(:,3),{' '},cellname(:,4))));
out = cellname(ii,:);

[Mohammad Abouali]

I remove my answer. I like yours more.

[Christos Antonakopoulos]

Very good code Andrei thanx

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

This is trivial if ISO 8601 date strings are used, because then a lexicographical sort really does put them into the correct date order:

% Original cell array:
X = {
 1, 5, '01/20/2014',  '19:22:05.0120'; ...
 2, 6, '01/15/2014',  '19:22:20.8020'; ...
 3, 7, '01/17/2014',  '20:01:26.0630'; ...
 4, 8, '01/16/2014',  '20:04:21.1260'};
% replace date strings with ISO 8601 dates:
X(:,3) = cellstr(datestr(datevec(X(:,3),'mm/dd/yyyy'),29));
% sort:
[~,idx] = sortrows(X(:,3:4));
Y = X(idx,:)

gives us this output:

Y = 
    [2]    [6]    '2014-01-15'    '19:22:20.8020'
    [4]    [8]    '2014-01-16'    '20:04:21.1260'
    [3]    [7]    '2014-01-17'    '20:01:26.0630'
    [1]    [5]    '2014-01-20'    '19:22:05.0120'

[Christos Antonakopoulos]

Thank you i will have this in mind with the iso 8601 dates.