How to make matlab variables named as excel header

I have a very generic excel file I am importing intp matlab.

First row is strings as the header names.

every row beneath that is a string (date) or numeric value. I want to make a matlab array as the header of each column, and the data in the array is the numeric value for each corresponding row. What would be the best method to do this? I have tried a few other methods found on here using evalin() and no luck.

xls file attached for reference.

Answer 1

[Bob Thompson]

It sounds like readtable might be what you're looking for. I don't think it's exactly what you're asking, but it should recognize the column headers as variable names, and then assign data accordingly.

[Drewsky3]

So readtable implrts the xls as a table, but what I then want to do is make an arry titled as that title header.

[Bob Thompson]

Why? You can certainly import the cells with xlsread, but I'm not entirely sure if this is the best way because I don't know what you want to do with it.

[nums, strs, all] = xlsread('FIT-03801L1.xls');

[Drewsky3]

I explained what I want to do in the main queation. I want to make a matlab array with the excel header as the variable name.

ie: t pt_001

1 5

2 17

3 45

so I want an array of type double, titles as the header (t, and pt_001)

so I will end with t=[1 2 3]

pt_001 = [5 17 45]

[Bob Thompson]

Mmm, I see now. The only way to create variables in that manner is with the eval command, which nobody ever recommends because it is terribly inefficient and leads to very bad coding practices.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but again I recommend using the table class variable. If you want to refer to a specific set of data then you can call the data using dot notation.

>> T = readtable('FIT-03801L1.xls');
>> T.t

ans = 

    1
    2
    3
    
>>

Alternatively, you can read the information in with readtable and then convert the data into a structure array, which is handled in much the same way.

>> T = readtable('FIT-03801L1.xls');
>> T = table2struct(T);

Answer 2

[Drewsky3]

Thanks for your help, I've actually made some progress with the eval funtion. Though it does lead to bad coding practives I've got extremely varried datasets that I'm working with. Thanks for your time.