Interchange variable names and strings
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How do I convert a string to a variable name (and vice versa)?
I want to read in a string, and use it as a variable name, such as when I load a *.mat, in which the variable names depend upon which program generated/saved the *.mat.
I can see it useful to convert a variable name to a string.
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Accepted Answer
Walter Roberson
on 21 Feb 2012
<http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_create_variables_A1.2C_A2.2C....2CA10_in_a_loop.3F
Consider using
S = load('YourMATFile.mat');
the_var_names = fieldnames(S);
second_var = S.(the_var_names{2});
You can slice, dice, trice, even julienne!
2 Comments
Walter Roberson
on 23 Feb 2012
the_var_names in the above code would contain the variable names.
I just pulled out the second one as an example to show how you can get at the data.
More Answers (1)
Doug Hull
on 21 Feb 2012
We need more details on what you are doing, but this is likely a bad idea. Your code is going to be very difficult to write like this, and you will be fighting MATLAB along the way quite a bit.
There are probably better ways of doing this than allowing users to define the internal variable names to your program. You would need to validate the names, write your code to handle unknown variable names, etc. There is likely a better way.
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