Delete duplicate rows from a large cell array

I asked this before but it seems a bit tricky!

I have a cell array (attached) of the structure 1 x 2 then 1 x 8. This hold data for 2 years and the 8 arrays of the 1 x 8 array hold data in various formats.

However, the data has come with duplicates like this:

'2000-01-10 1:00' 'HCM' '268' '20' '260' '2345' '0' '90'
'2000-01-10 1:00' 'HCM' '268' '20' '260' '2345' '0' '90'
'2000-01-10 2:00' 'HCM' '268' '14' '210' '645' '3' '12'
'2000-01-10 2:00' 'HCM' '268' '14' '210' '645' '3' '12'
'2000-01-10 3:00' 'HCM' '268' '02' '230' '345' '2' '40'
'2000-01-10 3:00' 'HCM' '268' '02' '230' '345' '2' '40'

Where each column shown above actually represents a XXXX x 1 cell array (cannot remember the row count)

As chronological order is very important, I would like to remove corresponding duplicate rows (based on the first time array, from each array without changing the order to get something like this:

'2000-01-10 1:00' 'HCM' '268' '20' '260' '2345' '0' '90'
'2000-01-10 2:00' 'HCM' '268' '14' '210' '645' '3' '12'
'2000-01-10 3:00' 'HCM' '268' '02' '230' '345' '2' '40'

Big help if you can help me. I have tried many too many options!

[per isakson]

• The most "tricky" part might be to describe the problem.
• Please give a concise explanation on why Answer by Star Strider on 26 Feb 2014 at 20:39 doesn't suffice.
• If you are asking for a working function, please give use a requirement specification.

[mashtine]

Correct, the most tricky part is describing this as I am not used to it. Star really showed patience in helping me and I think his final comment about reshaping (In my case, making the 1x8 cell array into a 2767793 x 8) and then running his above code. However, as the data is in varying formats, I cannot use cell2mat.

I attached the file above to better show my data. Again, thanks for the help!

Answer 1

[Thomas]

wit_dup={'2000-01-10 1:00' 'HCM' '268' '20' '260' '2345' '0' '90'
'2000-01-10 1:00' 'HCM' '268' '20' '260' '2345' '0' '90'
'2000-01-10 2:00' 'HCM' '268' '14' '210' '645' '3' '12'
'2000-01-10 2:00' 'HCM' '268' '14' '210' '645' '3' '12'
'2000-01-10 3:00' 'HCM' '268' '02' '230' '345' '2' '40'
'2000-01-10 3:00' 'HCM' '268' '02' '230' '345' '2' '40'
}

wd=wit_dup;

[~,idx]=unique(strcat(wd(:,1),wd(:,2),wd(:,3),wd(:,4),wd(:,5),wd(:,6),wd(:,7),wd(:,8)) );

withoutduplicates=wd(idx,:)

[mashtine]

Thanks Thomas, I am pretty sure that would work but my data is a bit different. Did you have a look at the file I uploaded? The first two arrays of a 1x8 are cell and the rest are double so that formatting throws it off. It would most certainly work however if I could make all of them double and then perform your code or the ones provided before.