How to categorise a column vector

May i know how to categorise a given column vector into different types of vector? eg: given X=[A;A;G;K;M] and have to categorise if the first element of X is A-type or G-type or K-type into a matrix of those types ,eg: type = 'AGKM' and from the type , we have to sort in into different colors. eg: A-type is colored[0.64,0.73,1] G-type is colored[1,1,0.6] and so on

[Ameer Hamza]

Can you give an example. Show an input matrix and what is your expected output. Then it will be easy for us to understand the question.

[Lorenne]

It's like type = 'ABF' A-type color=[0.64,0.73,1] B-type color=[0.7,0.88,0.89] F-type color=[0.79 0.51 0.75] X = ['B';'F';'F';'A'] and you have to categorise the type to different colors

Answer 1

[Siyu Guo]

Try the "unique" function. Help it in MATLAB.

[Lorenne]

Its like a cell array that is extract from excel file with the first content in the cell, eg:'K011' in the first cell, so i used exotype{1}(1) and it gives ans = 'K'

But im not sure how to categorise all the cells with 'K' together to one type

[Siyu Guo]

I'm not sure whether the manipulation of cells has been improved. If I were you, I'd use for to iterate all the cells, extract the type of each cell. After this, I'd use a vector "type" to record the type code of each cell, like (assume the type code is of 'char' data type):

type = blanks(n); % n is the number of cell elements.
for i = 1:n
    ...
    type(i) = extract_type_from_cell(i);
    ...
end
distinct_type = unique(type);
It may not be very efficient, but I think at least it should work for your task.