Trying to sort unique values in cell array based on different column

I'm trying to sort unique values in cell array based on one column.

I tried to use the solution suggested by Andrei Bobrov, by grouping variables, but get an error message:

Error using tabular/varfun>vertcatWithNumRowsCheck (line 488)

Unable to concatenate incompatible values returned by the function '@(x)x(:)'' when applied to groups in the variable 'test2':

Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent.

I have an array with two columns, and I would like to retain only 8 unique combinations in the order dictated by the columns containing numerical values from 1 to 8.

The code is the following:

test = {'Type1', 'Type1', 'Type2', 'Type2', 'Type2', 'Type3', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type5', 'Type5', 'Type6', 'Type6', 'Type7', 'Type8';

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

T = cell2table(test);

T.test2 = str2double(T.test2 );

mis = 1

out = varfun(@(x)x(:)',T,'GroupingVariables','test1');

I would kindly appreciate an explanation as to how it doesn't work, or suggestion for another solution.

Answer 1

[Voss]

test = {'Type1', 'Type1', 'Type2', 'Type2', 'Type2', 'Type3', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type4', 'Type5', 'Type5', 'Type6', 'Type6', 'Type7', 'Type8';
        '1' '1' '2' '2' '2' '3' '4' '4' '4' '4' '4' '5' '5' '6' '6' '7' '8'}';

"I'm trying to sort unique values in cell array based on one column.... I would like to retain only 8 unique combinations in the order dictated by the columns containing numerical values from 1 to 8"

Does this do what you want?

[~,ii] = unique(test(:,2),'stable');
result = test(ii,:)

result = 8×2 cell array
    {'Type1'}    {'1'}
    {'Type2'}    {'2'}
    {'Type3'}    {'3'}
    {'Type4'}    {'4'}
    {'Type5'}    {'5'}
    {'Type6'}    {'6'}
    {'Type7'}    {'7'}
    {'Type8'}    {'8'}

[Marcin Brynda]

Yes, this is exactly, what I was looking for! Thanks a lot.

[Voss]

You're welcome!