Sort waves numerically

Share icon

Fri, 02/24/2012 - 04:50 pm

1)Can the make index, sort index, or sort operations sort waves that have been imported with associated file names with text and numbers in them?

2)Do the the waves with file names need to have 0's as place holders...ie (wavename: "022412-TLDK_50C_0001" for file names ending in 1-1500 for example.

3)Can Igor sort those wave names effectively in a table?

Thanks.
The various sort operations in IGOR sort waves containing either numbers or strings. If you want to sort a list of waves create a text wave that contains the names of the wave that you want to sort and then sort this text wave. For example
•make dd, ee,ff,hh,gg,aa,cc
•make/t/n=7 textWave
•String list=WaveList("*",";","")
•textWave=stringFromList(p,list)
•edit textWave
•Sort textWave,textWave


I hope this helps,

A.G.
WaveMetrics, Inc.

February 24, 2012 at 05:11 pm - Permalink

In addition to AG's comment, this qoute from the help info for the /A flag for the Sort operation may be illuminating...

/A Alphanumeric sort. When sortKeyWaves includes text waves, the normal sorting places "wave1" and "wave10" before "wave9". Use /A to sort the number portion numerically, so that "wave9" is sorted before "wave10".

See help for Sort for a more complete explanation.

February 27, 2012 at 07:43 am - Permalink