frequency of 1, 2, 3rd most occurring number

I have a 27*792 matrix which contains 1:27 numbers in random order. I am finding column wise mode and saving them in vector a so that i can find which number has maximum occurence in 1st column, 2nd column and so on. If the mode of the first and second column is same, i want to replace that number by the second most frequent number in from the column array. In case, the second number also exist, i want to find the next frequent number. In short, the final array which i get should have unoque pattern of numbers 1:27 in specific order. I have tried to code it:

ranks = randi([1 27],27,792,'double'); % create array for

a = zeros(1,27); % initialize vector

new_a = zeros(1,27); % initialize vector

for i = 1:27 % for n columns

X = ranks(i,:); % get ith column

m = mode(X) % find mode

a(i) = m; % save mide of ith column

new_a = a;

if any(new_a(1:i-1) == a(i)) % check if the mode m exists in ith-1 iterations

X(X==m) = NaN ; set the mode to nan

m1 = mode(X) % find new mode1

a(i) = m1;

new_a = a;

if any(new_a(1:i-1) == m1) % if mode m1 exists in ith-1 iteration

X(X==m1,m2) = NaN ;

m1 = mode(X) save matrix

end

end

end

Answer 1

[Voss]

Maybe this will work

ranks = randi([1 27],27,792,'double'); % create array for 
a = zeros(1,27); % initialize vector
for i = 1:27 % for n rows
    X = ranks(i,:); % get ith row
    m = mode(X); % find mode
    while any(a(1:i-1) == m)  % check if the mode  m exists in iterations 1 through i-1 
        X(X==m) = NaN; % set the mode to nan
        m = mode(X); % find new mode
        if isnan(m)
            % if all elements of X have been replaced with NaNs there is
            % nothing else to do but let the mode for this row be NaN
            break
        end
    end
    a(i) = m; % save mode of ith row
end
disp(a);

    14    17    12    20    16     5    11    21     1     3     9    22     8     6    24    27    23    26    19     2    13     7    10    25    15    18     4

numel(a) == numel(unique(a))

ans = logical
   1