sorting table by date with specific date format- matlab

Question

i got this table that i want to sort the rows by the date in one of the columns, the table basicly looks like this:

label1     01/12/2020     500     Type2;
label1     26/11/2020     553     Type1;
label2     01/01/2021     951     Type3;
label2     18/12/2019     658     Type3;
label1     01/12/2020     500     Type2;

when i use sortrows it sorts the table by the format MM-dd-yyyy though i need to change it to dd-MM-yyyy so the table will look like this in the end :

label2     18/12/2019     658     Type3;
label1     26/11/2020     553     Type1;
label1     01/12/2020     500     Type2;
label1     01/12/2020     500     Type2;
label2     01/01/2021     951     Type3;

please help solve this

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65650538/sorting-table-by-date-with-specific-date-format-matlab

Answer 1

Your best bet here is to convert the timestamp data into datetime. The datetime constructor can automatically work out the format in this case, so here's all you need:

% Create table
t = table(["label1"; "label1"; "label2"], ...
    ["01/12/2020"; "26/11/2020"; "01/01/2021"], ...
    [500; 553; 951], ...
    ["Type2"; "Type1"; "Type3"]);

% Convert Var2 into datetime format
t.Var2 = datetime(t.Var2);

% Now use sortrows
sortrows(t, 2)

This gives the result

  3×4 table

      Var1         Var2        Var3     Var4  
    ________    ___________    ____    _______

    "label1"    26-Nov-2020    553     "Type1"
    "label1"    01-Dec-2020    500     "Type2"
    "label2"    01-Jan-2021    951     "Type3"