MATLAB: Order cell array

dirdirectoryfileMATLABmultiple files

I have this cell array http://dl.dropbox.com/u/59868217/fileList.mat. Can I sort the array with respect to the number of characters that compose the file name? Cioè is possible obtain the array like this
'tot16/57583.raw'
'tot16/213587.raw'
'tot16/369571.raw'
'tot16/681550.raw'
'tot16/837534.raw'
'tot16/993529.raw'
'tot16/1149513.raw'
I obtain this list of file by this script function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName)
dirData = dir(dirName); %# Get the data for the current directory
dirIndex = [dirData.isdir]; %# Find the index for directories
fileList = {dirData(~dirIndex).name}'; %'# Get a list of the files
if ~isempty(fileList)
fileList = cellfun(@(x) fullfile(dirName,x),... %# Prepend path to files
fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
end
subDirs = {dirData(dirIndex).name}; %# Get a list of the subdirectories
validIndex = ~ismember(subDirs,{'.','..'}); %# Find index of subdirectories
%# that are not '.' or '..'
for iDir = find(validIndex) %# Loop over valid subdirectories
nextDir = fullfile(dirName,subDirs{iDir}); %# Get the subdirectory path
fileList = [fileList; getAllFiles(nextDir)]; %# Recursively call getAllFiles
end
end

Best Answer

There's a couple of ways to do this... I assume you want the numbers in ascending order. This works, but relies on the stability of sort():
fileList = sort(fileList);
[~,I] = sort(cellfun(@length, fileList));
fileList = fileList(I);
The proper way to do it is:
n = cellfun(@(x) str2double(x{:}), regexp(fileList, '/(\d+)\.raw', 'tokens'));
[~, I] = sort(n);
fileList = fileList(I);
This converts the filenames to numbers, finds the sort order and rearranges the list accordingly.
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