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Walter Roberson does it again by winning the coveted MOST ACCEPTED answers badge for all his contributions in MATLAB Answers this past year. Walter has won this badge every year since 2015. It was way back in 2014 when Image Analyst out paced Walter and was awarded the badge.

There are 10 community members who have achieved the Top Downloads badge for their popular File Exchange submissions in 2019. Do you recognize any of these names? There's a good chance you've used one or more of their toolboxes or scripts in your work if you're a frequent visitor to File Exchange, if you're not you might want to check out what they've posted, it may save you a lot of time writing your own code.

--------------------- Top Downloads Badge Winners -----------------

Congratulations to all these winners and a giant THANK YOU for all they've done this past year to help everyone in the MATLAB Central community!

David
David
Last activity on 21 Jan 2020

Introducing File Exchange badges

We are happy to announce that virtual badges can now be achieved for participating in MATLAB Central File Exchange . We have 30 badges that anyone can achieve, which will also boost your community profile. Some badges are relatively simple to get while others will depend on how useful your submissions are to others in the community. Check out Ned Gulley's blog post for a great introduction.

Explore resources, ask questions, and discuss topics related to using Simulink to apply power electronics control to Electric Vehicles, Renewable Energy, Battery Systems, Power Conversion, and Motor Control. This is the 3rd MATLAB Central community, after Maker and SimBiology , and is moderated by Tony Lennon . Tony is the Power Electronics Marketing Manager at MathWorks.

Visit the community here . As always, let us know what you think by liking this post or commenting below.

Summary:
Dynamically accessing variable names can negatively impact the readability of your code and can cause it to run slower by preventing MATLAB from optimizing it as well as it could if you used alternate techniques. The most common alternative is to use simple and efficient indexing.
Explanation:
Sometimes beginners (and some self-taught professors) think it would be a good idea to dynamically create or access variable names, the variables are often named something like these:
  • matrix1, matrix2, matrix3, matrix4, ...
  • test_20kmh, test_50kmh, test_80kmh, ...
  • nameA, nameB, nameC, nameD,...
Good reasons why dynamic variable names should be avoided:
There are much better alternatives to accessing dynamic variable names:
Note that avoiding eval (and assignin, etc.) is not some esoteric MATLAB restriction, it also applies to many other programming languages as well:
MATLAB Documentation:
If you are not interested in reading the answers below then at least read MATLAB's own documentation on this topic Alternatives to the eval Function, which states "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." Data in a single array can be accessed very efficiently using indexing.
Note that all of these problems and disadvantages also apply to functions load (without an output variable), assignin, evalin, and evalc, and the MATLAB documentation explicitly recommends to "Avoid functions such as eval, evalc, evalin, and feval(fname)".
The official MATLAB blogs explain why eval should be avoided, the better alternatives to eval, and clearly recommend against magically creating variables. Using eval comes out at position number one on this list of Top 10 MATLAB Code Practices That Make Me Cry. Experienced MATLAB users recommend avoiding using eval for trivial code, and have written extensively on this topic.
The community is very helpful, yet I feel really powerless that I cannot find the appropriate way to code, nor find the problems with the codes I have written. I have read numerous books on MATLAB, mostly related with science and engineering applications. Any advice to improve would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Raviteja
Raviteja
Last activity on 27 Jan 2012

Good programming practice...

Hello all,
Please explain good MATLAB programming practice methods. It will help to the guys who are new to programming like me.
Previously I used
for i=1:10
after following some suggestions from this answers pages I learnt to use
for i1=1:100
This is the good way to write programs.
Like this, as a professional programmer, please mention some good programming practice techniques.
It will useful to all!
amit jain
amit jain
Last activity on 2 Jun 2023

How to learn MATLAB

What is the best way to learn MATLAB at home without a tutor?