How to reorder cell array columns based on the order of a vector matrix, while keeping rows intact in Matlab?

Question

I have a 108x8 matrix (called matrix) that looks like this:

5   8   3   6   2   1   7   4
8   4   2   7   1   3   6   5
5   4   3   2   1   7   8   6
1   7   8   5   6   4   3   2

I have another 108x8 cell array (called data) that looks like this:

   'B'  'B' 'B' 'A' 'B' 'B' 'A' 'B'
   'A'  'B' 'B' 'A' 'B' 'A' 'A' 'A'
   'A'  'A' 'B' 'A' 'A' 'B' 'B' 'B'
   'A'  'A' 'A' 'B' 'A' 'A' 'A' 'A'

I want to rearrange the matrix such that each row remains intact and is sorted in ascending order. This can be easily done with the [vals order] = sort(matrix,2) command. I want to rearrange the data matrix in the same manner.

Previous solutions suggested the use of a command such as:

reordered_data=data(order)

However, this does not give the desired outcome, it does rearrange the data, but not in the correct order.

Hopefully this is clear, please let me know if clarification is needed.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can convert order index to matrix index, so you don't need loops.

[vals, order] = sort(matrix,2);
[r,c] = size(matrix);
index = bsxfun( @plus, order, (0:r-1)'*c );
data = data';
reordered_data = data(index')';