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SORT Sort

Section: Array Generation and Manipulations

# Usage

Sorts an n-dimensional array along the specified dimensional. The first form sorts the array along the first non-singular dimension.

      B = sort(A)

Alternately, the dimension along which to sort can be explicitly specified

      B = sort(A,dim)

FreeMat does not support vector arguments for `dim` - if you need `A` to be sorted along multiple dimensions (i.e., row first, then columns), make multiple calls to `sort`. Also, the direction of the sort can be specified using the `mode` argument

      B = sort(A,dim,mode)

where `mode = 'ascend'` means to sort the data in ascending order (the default), and `mode = 'descend'` means to sort the data into descending order.

When two outputs are requested from `sort`, the indexes are also returned. Thus, for

      [B,IX] = sort(A)
      [B,IX] = sort(A,dim)
      [B,IX] = sort(A,dim,mode)

an array `IX` of the same size as `A`, where `IX` records the indices of `A` (along the sorting dimension) corresponding to the output array `B`.

Two additional issues worth noting. First, a cell array can be sorted if each cell contains a `string`, in which case the strings are sorted by lexical order. The second issue is that FreeMat uses the same method as MATLAB to sort complex numbers. In particular, a complex number `a` is less than another complex number `b` if `abs(a) < abs(b)`. If the magnitudes are the same then we test the angle of `a`, i.e. `angle(a) < angle(b)`, where `angle(a)` is the phase of `a` between `-pi,pi`.

# Example

Here are some examples of sorting on numerical arrays.

    --> A = int32(10*rand(4,3))

    A =
     8 2 8
     0 5 5
     2 5 7
     3 7 1

    --> [B,IX] = sort(A)
    B =
     0 2 1
     2 5 5
     3 5 7
     8 7 8

    IX =
     2 1 4
     3 2 2
     4 3 3
     1 4 1

    --> [B,IX] = sort(A,2)
    B =
     2 8 8
     0 5 5
     2 5 7
     1 3 7

    IX =
     2 1 3
     1 2 3
     1 2 3
     3 1 2

    --> [B,IX] = sort(A,1,'descend')
    B =
     8 7 8
     3 5 7
     2 5 5
     0 2 1

    IX =
     1 4 1
     4 2 3
     3 3 2
     2 1 4

Here we sort a cell array of strings.

    --> a = {'hello','abba','goodbye','jockey','cake'}

    a =
     [hello] [abba] [goodbye] [jockey] [cake]

    --> b = sort(a)

    b =
     [abba] [cake] [goodbye] [hello] [jockey]