Filename IDL to Matlab Conversion

Okay so I'm trying to convert a couple IDL programs into MatLab programs, I'm using the IDL2Matlab program but it seems to have some issues with certain things so i'm trying to clean them up.

My question is:

The IDL was saving a file name as such:

ival_filename = '*ival.' + smode + '.txt';

where smode is a global variable it's taking these 3 parts and using them to name files

How would I do this in matlab?

Thanks

[tlawren]

What does the * mean in '*ival.'?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

ival_filename = ['*ival.', smode, '.txt'];

Answer 2

[tlawren]

I'm not completely sure what you are trying to do, but if you are simply wanting to construct a string to use as a filename then that is pretty easy. Consider the following example.

 fpre = 'ival'; % prefix
 fext = '.txt'; % file extension
 smode = pi; % as an example

 % combine fpre, smode, and fext to form filename
 fname = [fpre, num2str(smode), fext];

The above will yield ival3.1416.txt. Note, smode is numeric in this example. If smode is a character or string, then you can just use:

 fname = [fpre, smode, fext];

I hope this answers your question.