Automatically accessing the values of variable from workspace

Question

I am loading a loop in which different variables are loaded in every iteration. Name of each variable is different in each iteration. Is there anyway in Matlab to automatically access the value of that variable. So far I have tried like that:

for i=1:4
    str_load=strcat (fold_str, 'class_',class{:,i}, \Feeds_',files{:,i},'.mat');
    load(str_load)
    variables = who;
    var = strncmpi(variables,'Feed_A',6);
    chk=find(var==1);
    org_var=variables(chk,:);

end

I can have the name of the targeted variable in org_var. But How can I access values inside that?

Cris Luengo · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-31 04:32:45Z

3

The eval function would evaluate the variable name and return its value:

value = eval('org_var');

But a better solution would be to capture the output of load:

data = load(str_load);

Instead of loading all the variables into your workspace (and potentially changing any of the variables you need in your loop), it loads them in a struct data. Now you have:

value = data.Feed_A;

You can also do

variables = fieldnames(data);

and if the variable name you need is in a string,

var = 'Feed_A';
value = data.(var);

edited Jan 31, 2018 at 4:32

answered Jan 31, 2018 at 2:35

Cris Luengo

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3 Comments

Aadnan Farooq A Over a year ago

org_var is a cell and it contains the name of variable 'Feed_A'. When I used value = eval('org_val'). It shows me the same variable name inside value 'Feed_A'. Can't have the data of Feed_A variable

Aadnan Farooq A Over a year ago

When I try the loadbut how can i make it general because every file will load have different variable to use such as Feed_A, Feed_B, etc

Cris Luengo Over a year ago

@AadnanFarooqA: Updated the answer with some more ideas. I'm sure you can compose these into what you're looking for.

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