Matlab change structure field name by comparing it with a list of conversions

Hello,

I want to code something which can do the following:

I have a file named 'labellist.mat' which has 2 columns and in column 1 all the names I want to replace are in and in column 2 all the new names which I want to replace with are in. So I wanna make a loop to check if the a name is in column 1, if yes replace it with the name in column 2. The fieldnames I want to replace are in a struct.

if fieldname is in the 'labellist.mat' column 1'

replace that fieldname with 'labellist.mat' column 2.

I hope I was able to explain my question correctly.

Thanks,

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Mustahsan - to be clear, you have a struct with a number of fields. If any of those field names appear in column 1 of your labellist.mat file, then you want to replace that field name with that in column 2. Is that is correct, then you can try the following. Suppose you have a cell array of field names and their replacements (read from your file) as

 namesArray = {'fieldA' 'fieldANew' ; 'fieldB' 'fieldBNew' ; 'fieldC' 'fieldCNew'};

and a struct like

 myStruct = struct('fieldA',0,'fieldB',1,'fieldD',42);

where

 myStruct = 

    fieldA: 0
    fieldB: 1
    fieldD: 42

We can then create a list of the fields in the structure, iterate over each one and replace where necessary

 structFields = fields(myStruct);
 for k=1:length(structFields)

     fieldName = structFields{k};

     % find the index of this field name in the first column of namesArray
     idx = find(strcmp(namesArray(:,1),fieldName));

     if ~isempty(idx)

         % field name exists so get the replacement
         newFieldName = namesArray{idx,2};

         % create the new field
         myStruct.(newFieldName) = myStruct.(fieldName);

         % remove the old field name
         myStruct = rmfield(myStruct,fieldName);
      end
 end

And the field names in myStruct are replaced

 myStruct = 

       fieldD: 42
    fieldANew: 0
    fieldBNew: 1

[Mustahsan Majeed]

It works!

thank you very much for your help.

[Geoff Hayes]

Glad it worked!