Trying to link two matrices based on 2 columns in each

I have two matrices involving the data of stars that I am trying to link by their x and y coordinates in MATLAB. The first matrix is 245443x27 and the second is 53432x12 and by the end of this I'm hoping for a data set that is 53432x39. The matrices are not ordered the same and obviously the do not contain the same data.

The x and y coordinates are located in the 2nd and 3rd column in the large matrix and in the first and second columns in the small matrix.

I am not that good at coding, so i cant seem to get it to work. So far I have tried using a for loop with an if statement trying to take an x value from one, and search through the other to find the same, then take the y value of the first and see if it matches. If it doesn't then it repeats until it goes through the whole data set.

Thank you in advance!

[KSSV]

Instead of sorting them..you can go for interpolation, which could give you what you want.

Answer 1

[OCDER]

Try using intersect.

%A represents the large matrix. Col 2 and 3 are the x and y coordinates, respectively.
A = [1 2 3; 
     2 4 6;
     3 3 2;
     4 6 8];

%B represents the small matrix. Col 1 and 2 are the x and y coordinates, respectively.
B = [6 8 1;
     3 2 2];

[~, IA, IB] = intersect(A(:, 2:3), B(:, 1:2), 'rows');
AB = [A(IA, :) B(IB, :)]; %This is the combined matrix (the 39-column one)