How to distinguish two similar but different strings?

I have a function that sorts files based on file name. Two of the categories are 'Z7PR' and 'Z7PR1', which are two different tests. However, my sorting program sorts 'Z7PR' into 'Z7PR1', because it seems to match the 'Z7PR'. Is there anyway to distinguish the two without using 'Z7PR_' as I am currently doing?

Here is my code:

function otpS = filesort(inpS)
C = {'Z1P','Z2P','Z1G','Z2G','Z3K','Z4K','Z5K','Z3M','Z4M','Z5M','Z6MS','Z7PR_','Z7PR1'}; %files to find
N = {inpS.name}; %initializes structure
otpS = struct(); %initializes structure
for k = 1:numel(C)
    idx = cellfun('isempty',regexp(N,C{k},'once')); %finds matching strings
    otpS.(C{k}) = N(~idx); %organizes files based on C
end
end

[Image Analyst]

Why not just use the sort() function?

[Ibro Tutic]

It seems I like to make things more difficult then necessary, I'll take a look at the function.

Answer 1

[Stephen Cobeldick]

Some ideas:

• use strcmp instead of regexp.
• add ^ and $ to your regular expression.
• split the strings and use sortrows.
• calculate the edit-distance, e.g.: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/318477-find-the-most-similar-word-from-a-set-of-words#answer_248951