I cannot imagine that there is any easier method than sortrows:
x = randi(4, 8, 8);
y = sortrows(x);
[EDITED] For large arrays like randi(4, 1e5, 10) this is about 10% faster than sortrows:
function [y, index] = leanSortRows(x)
[v, index] = sort(x(:, n)); %#ok<ASGLU>
for k = n-1:-1:1
[v, index2] = sort(x(index, k)); %#ok<ASGLU>
index = index(index2);
end
y = x(index, :);
This is similar to the fallback for backward sorting. The MEX-function sortrows.c, which called for standard cases uses the quicksort algorithm of the C-libs, which are obviously slower than Matlab's built-in SORT.
