4.13: Sorting Arrays

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Page ID: 136631

Zara Noroozi
Irvine Valley College

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The sort function arranges values in ascending order by default. For a row or column vector, this is straightforward. For a 2D array, MATLAB sorts each column independently.

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Using sort

rowEx = [76, 75, 40, 66, 18]; 

sortedRowEx = sort(rowEx) % sorts the row vector


colEx = [71; 4; 28; 5; 10]; % sort the column vector

sortedColEx = sort(colEx)


array2 = [29, 90, 14, 85;
          51, 96, 15, 26;
          70, 55, 14, 82];

sortedArray2 = sort(array2) % sort the 2D array

Solution

sortedRowEx =

   18   40   66   75   76

sortedColEx =

    4
    5
   10
   28
   71

sortedArray2 =

   29   55   14   26
   51   90   14   82
   70   96   15   85

To sort in descending order, use the second input argument "descend".

sort(rowEx, 'descend')

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