Alternative: Use a table or timetable Array
table (introduced in release R2013b) and timetable (introduced in release R2016b) arrays allow you to store data with row and/or column names with which you can access the data. For example, if you create a table with variables named Age, Gender, Height, Weight, and Smoker and rows named with the last names of the patients:
load patients
patients = table(Age,Gender,Height,Weight,Smoker,...
'RowNames',LastName);
you can ask for all the ages of the first five patients:
or all the data for the patients with last names Smith or Jones:
patients({'Smith', 'Jones'}, :)
You can also add new variables to the table, either by hard-coding the name of the variable:
patients.veryTall = patients.Height > 66
or using variable names stored in char or string variables. The code sample below creates new variables named over40 and under35 in the patients table using different indexing techniques.
newname1 = 'over40';
patients.(newname1) = patients.Age > 40;
newname2 = 'under35';
patients{:, newname2} = patients.Age < 35;
patients(1:10, :)
The code sample below selects either Height or Weight and shows the selected variable for the fifth through tenth patients using dynamic names.
if rand > 0.5
selectedVariable = 'Height';
else
selectedVariable = 'Weight';
end
patients.(selectedVariable)(5:10)
See this documentation page for more information about techniques you can use to access and manipulate data in a table or timetable array. This documentation page contains information about accessing data in a timetable using the time information associated with the rows.