error check for unique values of dates from multiple different years data set and pick one over the other if duplicated in matlab

One way to error check for unique values of dates from multiple different years data set is to use the unique function in Matlab. Here is an example code block that shows how to do this:

main.m
% Create example dataset with duplicated dates
dates = ['1/1/2021'; '1/1/2022'; '2/2/2021'; '3/3/2021'; '3/3/2021'];
values = [10; 20; 30; 40; 50];

% Find unique dates
[unique_dates, idx] = unique(dates);

% Check if there are duplicated dates
if length(unique_dates) < length(dates)
    % If there are duplicated dates, pick the first value
    values = values(idx);
end
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In this example, the unique function is used to find the unique dates from the dates vector. The idx variable contains the index of the first occurrence of each unique date. If there are duplicated dates, the length of unique_dates will be less than the length of dates. In that case, the values vector is updated to only include the values that correspond to the first occurrence of each unique date.