How do I convert "8.1076e-05" into 0.0000811 in MATLAB?

Question

In my array of strings, I have some values like "8.1076e-05". The problem I encountered while shorting. I used the code FinalHierarchy = sortrows(B, 3, 'descend'); to short, the result is below.

   "FC624  "    "0.010686"     "9.5329e-05"
"FC642  "    "0.0044959"    "8.2636e-05"
"FC621  "    "0.0090886"    "8.1076e-05"
"FC622  "    "0.0086253"    "7.6943e-05"
"FC623  "    "0.0080882"    "7.2152e-05"
"FC643  "    "0.0028437"    "5.2267e-05"
"FC646  "    "0.0025469"    "4.6813e-05"
"FC644  "    "0.0012072"    "2.2189e-05"
"FC122  "    "0.0073847"    "0.00077775"
"FC142  "    "0.010012"     "0.00072479"
"FC131  "    "0.0094101"    "0.00071951"
"FC121  "    "0.0068294"    "0.00071926"
"FC521  "    "0.0095355"    "0.00069401"
"FC112  "    "0.0087711"    "0.00063404"
"FC111  "    "0.008607"     "0.00062218"
"FC531  "    "0.0058125"    "0.00055105"
"FC141  "    "0.0074634"    "0.0005403" 
"FC228  "    "0.0098074"    "0.00049734"
"FC224"      "0.009434"     "0.0004784" 
"FC221  "    "0.0092251"    "0.00046782"
"FC225"      "0.0088874"    "0.00045069"

It can be seen above that MATLAB has considered the value 2.2189e-05 bigger than 0.00077775. I guess the reason behind it is, MATLAB compared 2.2189 with 0.00077775. It is because the column is a string. In my calculation, column 2 and column 3 were double but when I concatenated them with a string column 1 as 'B', it became string. I guess it might have a very easy solution if 2.2189e-05 stays as 0.00002219. I try to change the format to longG but the problem still persists. Can someone suggest any idea to deal with it?

Answer 1

As you said, it is because your elements are strings. So what you could do is:

% Sort the column after having casted it to double
[~, idx] = sort(str2double(B(:, 3)), 'descend');

% Apply the sorting to the initial matrix
FinalHierarchy  = B(idx, :);