MATLAB: Sorting the rows of a 2-column matrix based on entries from one column.

arrayarray manipulationcolumnmatrix manipulationsortvector

I have a matrix with two columns. The first column is numbers and the second is a string of words. I want to sort the entire matrix in ascending order based on the first column entries and without losing each number's second column pair. A simplified example is as follows:
4  Apple
3  Orange
6  Pear
1  Peach
to 
1 Peach
3 Orange
4 Apple
6 Pear

Best Answer

C = {4, 'Apple';
     3, 'Orange';
     6, 'Pear';
     1, 'Peach'};
sortrows(C)
ans =
    4×2 cell array
      [1]    'Peach' 
      [3]    'Orange'
      [4]    'Apple' 
      [6]    'Pear'
See the documentation for sortrows for details.
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