How to find minimum value of a column imported from Excel using MATLAB

Question

I have a set of values in the following pattern.

A   B   C   D
1   5   6   11
2   6   5   21
3   7   3   42
4   3   7   22
1   2   3   54
2   3   2   43
3   4   3   27
4   3   2   14

I exported the every column into MATLAB workspace as follows.

A = xlsread('F:\R.xlsx','Complete Data','A2:A43'); 
B = xlsread('F:\R.xlsx','Complete Data','B2:B43'); 
C = xlsread('F:\R.xlsx','Complete Data','C2:C43'); 
D = xlsread('F:\R.xlsx','Complete Data','D2:D43'); 

I need help with code where the it has to check the Column A, find the lowest D value and output the corresponding B and C values. I need the output to look like.

1   5   6   11
2   6   5   21
3   4   3   27
4   3   2   14

I read through related questions and understand that I need to make it a matrix and sort it based on the element on the 4th column using

sortrows

and get indices of the sorted elements. But I am stuck here. Please Guide me.

Answer 1

1. You can export those columns in one go as:

    ABCD = xlsread('F:\\R.xlsx','Complete Data','A2:D43'); 

2. Now use sortrows to sort the rows according to the first and the fourth column.

    req = sortrows(ABCD, [1 4]); 

3. ☆ If all elements of the first column exist twice then:

    req = req(1:2:end,:); 

   ☆ If it is not necessary that all elements of the first column will exist twice then:

    [~, ind] = unique(req(:,1)); req = req(ind,:);