Q:

Count strings occurrences and plot histogram

Is there any straightforward way to create a histogram from a cell array like the one below? The spacing between the consecutive bars should be exactly the same and the labels of the x-axis should be the corresponding names of the variables below in a vertical orientation.
'w464'
'w462'
'w461'
'w464'
'w461'
'w463'
'w466'
'w461'

A:

I would like to know a better way, as well.  Fwiw, I have used countmember in a roundabout way to plot data like this.  I.E. if the data you posted was named A
>> B={sort(unique(A)) countmember(sort(unique(A)),A)};
>> bar(B{2});
>> set(gca,'XTickLabel',B{1})

A:

If you have access to the statistics toolbox, grp2idx is very useful:
%# sorting is only necessary if the output should be sorted as well
[idx,label] = grp2idx(sort(A)) 

hist(idx,unique(idx));
set(gca,'xTickLabel',label)

A:

A solution that only uses built-in functions
[u,~,n] = unique(A(:));
B = accumarray(n, 1, [], @sum);
bar(B)
set(gca,'XTickLabel',u)

