Put variable names into a cell array or string array
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I have a number of similarly named variables in my script, eg
VarableAB
VarableDEF
VarableGHIJK
:
VarableZ
How can I get all these variable names into a cell array or a string array that I can loop round to do the same thing to each variable?
7 Comments
Stephen23
on 10 Oct 2024
Edited: Stephen23
on 1 Dec 2024 at 6:17
"I am not a programmer, just a scientist who tries to use MATLAB to analyse data."
Me too.
"Maybe I did paint myself into a corner with this problem, but I didn't know any better."
We all start new topics knowing nothing about them.
"I struggle with many concepts in MATLAB and other programming languages and don't feel that I have the time to learn them properly."
Using vectors, matrices, arrays and indexing are not esoteric things that only programmers understand, they are really very fundamental to using MATLAB:
Accepted Answer
Rik
on 10 Oct 2024
Adding to the comments: you are putting data (a description and therefore a property) in the variable name. That is where your design is going wrong.
What you should probably have done is to write each of them to a separate mat file, or make them all fields of a struct.
When you have a bunch of mat files you can use dir to generate the array to loop over. If you choose to make it a struct array you can use fieldnames like this:
Varable.AB=1;
Varable.DEF=2;
Varable.GHIJK=3;
for fn=fieldnames(Varable).'
current = Varable.(fn{1});
fprintf('value of field %s is %d\n',fn{1},current)
end
1 Comment
Stephen23
on 10 Oct 2024
Edited: Stephen23
on 10 Oct 2024
Supplementing this answer: using a structure array and storing that meta-data in its own field also allows the use of meta-data which are not valid fieldnames:
S(1).data = 11;
S(1).meta = 'AB';
S(2).data = 23;
S(2).meta = 'CDE';
S(3).data = 99;
S(3).meta = 'This is not a valid fieldname';
for k = 1:numel(S)
fprintf('The value of element %d is %d and has text "%s"\n',k,S(k).data,S(k).meta);
end
and makes it easy to obtain data based on substrings on the meta-data:
iwant = 'valid'; % some substring
idx = contains({S.meta},iwant);
S(idx).data
Although rather than matching substrings you might as well store each meta-data value in its own field:
In short: better data design make your code more robust (as well as neater, more efficient, etc.).
More Answers (1)
dormant
on 10 Oct 2024
1 Comment
Stephen23
on 10 Oct 2024
Edited: Stephen23
on 10 Oct 2024
"Is this so bad?"
From the MATLAB documentation: "A frequent use of the eval function is to create sets of variables such as A1, A2, ..., An, but this approach does not use the array processing power of MATLAB and is not recommended. The preferred method is to store related data in a single array. If the data sets are of different types or sizes, use a structure or cell array."
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