MATLAB: Cell array sort

Question

Dear All

I have A = {[1 2]; [2 2]; [2 1 3]; [1 1 3] }, a cell array contains several vectors with various length.

Input :

[1 2]

[2 2]

[2 1 3]

[1 1 3]

and I want to sort this cell array according to ascent order of each element, and regardless the length.

What I expect to have is

[1 1 3]

[1 2]

[2 1 3]

[2 2].

What I use is convert vector to string, and then sort the strings.

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% each number should have the same length in string.

ind = cellfun(@(x) num2str(x,'%05.f,'), A, 'UniformOutput',false);

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However, num2str is expensive. Do you have any other good idea to do this? Thanks!!!

Answer 1

[id,id] = sortrows(cell2mat(cellfun(@(x)x(1:2),A,'un',0)));
out = A(id);

other

m = cellfun(@numel,A);
k = arrayfun(@(x,y)[x{1} zeros(1,max(m)-y)],A,m,'un',0);
[id,id] = sortrows(cat(1,k{:}));
out = A(id);

other 2

[id,id] = sort(cellfun(@num2str,A,'un',0));
out = A(id);