creating a matrix with two columns of different type of data

Hi, I have one column of data (time) as the following that their type is char: 31-Jul-2014 11:24:00 31-Jul-2014 11:19:00 31-Jul-2014 11:14:00 31-Jul-2014 11:09:00 31-Jul-2014 11:04:00 31-Jul-2014 10:59:00 and I also have a column of data (values of blood glucose concentration) for the above time as the following (their type is cell): 60 58 58 56 56 56 Please help me first how can I create a matrix with two columns of the above data and after that how can I sort them based on the time.

thank you.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

This seems to do what you want:

DT  = ['31-Jul-2014 11:24:00'                   % Date Time (Character)
    '31-Jul-2014 11:19:00'
    '31-Jul-2014 11:14:00'
    '31-Jul-2014 11:09:00'
    '31-Jul-2014 11:04:00'
    '31-Jul-2014 10:59:00'];

Glc = {60                                       % Plasma Glucose (Cell)
    58
    58
    56
    56
    56};

DN = datenum(DT, 'dd-mmm-yyyy HH:MM:SS');       % Convert ‘DT’ To Date Numbers
DTG = [DN [Glc{:}]'];                           % Concatenate
DTGs = sortrows(DTG);                           % Sort Rows By Date
DTGm = [datevec(DTGs(:,1)) DTGs(:,2)]           % Display Result

The ‘[Glc{:}]’ creates a numeric array from the cell array (equivalent to using the ‘cell2mat’ function). It is then transposed to a column vector. The rest is straightforward.

The code produces:

DTGm =

          2014           7          31          10          59           0          56
          2014           7          31          11           4           0          56
          2014           7          31          11           9           0          56
          2014           7          31          11          14           0          58
          2014           7          31          11          19           0          58
          2014           7          31          11          24           0          60

[Star Strider]

And to convert all of it back to a cell array and display it:

DTGc = {datestr(DTGs(:,1), 'dd-mmm-yyyy HH:MM:SS')  DTGs(:,2)};
celldisp(DTGc)

[Mona Al-Kharraz]

I have two different arrays, one of them is string array and the other is double array. I want to concatenate them and sort the new matrix by the second column (double array). When I use the concept of the above solution, it consider the second column as string column and sort them as string not as double.