>> V = categorical(v,v,cellstr(['A':'E'].'))
V =
1×5 categorical array
A B C D E
>>
ADDENDUM:
To answer the follow-up--
Of course it does...with some slight modification to match the documentation of how categorical array generation works in general case... :)
v=[1:4 1]; % the initial numeric vector with duplicated entry
c=['A':'Z'].'; % the population of categorical labels
u=unique(v); % unique elements in initial vector
>> V = categorical(v,u,cellstr(c(u))) % create categorical vector V from v
V =
1×5 categorical array
A B C D A
>>
As the doc says, the second argument is unique() of the first by default and can be omitted if don't need the third to assign category names different from the values as do here. So, you have to do that yourself...and, of course, have a way to look up what the category name is supposed to be for each element in the original array.
