Appropriate imput for dynamic structure field name

Hello,

I am trying to create a dynamic field name to a structe with the dot notation. I.e. I have a for loop with a string variable that changes in each iteration, and I want to create a field with that string name in each of the iterations.

msd = struct;
for i = 1:NFiles %for each file 
    FileName = Track_file{i,1}.File(1);
    msd.(FileName) = []; %mal
end

The variable FileName is a string, but it keeps giving me an error: Invalid field name: 'Z:\Documents\Data\Sec1 vesicles\Spots in tracks statistics.csv'.

I also tried with:

msd.(FileName{1}) = [];

but the error is the same.

Why is it an invalid field name? which class of variable should I use as an imput?

Thank you very much!!!

Answer 1

[Rik]

Field names in matlab adhere to the same rules as variable names. They can't start with a digit and can only contain 0-9, a-z, A-Z, and underscores.

Since Z:\Documents\Data\Sec1 vesicles\Spots in tracks statistics.csv is not a valid variable name, it can't be a field name. You will have to store that file name in a different way.

[Jessica Angulo Capel]

Thank you very much!

I was so convinced it had to be a problem with the imput variable type that I didn't think of that. So simple!

[Steven Lord]

You could try converting that variable name to a valid identifier using matlab.lang.makeValidName. Alternately if you're using release R2019b or later you could make a table with a variable name that's not a valid MATLAB identifier.