retrieve data from structure when entering one field value MATLAB - matlab

Question

I have created a structure about patient. Its fields are name, age, etc. I want to be able to retrieve a patient's all info by entering its name or any other unique property. In other words, how can I find the patient's index? Thanks in advance.
patient(10).name = 'Chuck';
patient(10).age = 29;
patient(11).name = 'Sarah';
patient(11).name = 28;

Answer 1

Structures are not a good data type for doing what you want.
I suggest using a table. If you have your data in the structure already, call
patientTable = struct2table(patient);
Then, you get the index as:
chucksIndex = find( strcmp( patientTable.name, 'Chuck'))
And you get that patient's information as
patientTable(chucksIndex,:)
(note: if all you need the index for is lookup, you don't need to call find, the logical index from strcmp suffices).
Double-clicking the table in the workspace browser presents the data in an Excel-like fashion. The only thing you'll have to change in your code is accessing the data. Instead of
patient(10).name
patient(10).age
You write
patientTable.name{10}
patientTable.age(10)
If you do not want to use a table, you can get the index as:
chucksIndex = find(strcmp({patient.name},'Chuck'));

Answer 2

First, there is an error, it should be patient(11).name = 28;.
Here is a way this should work. I've started the indexes for Chuck and Sarah at 1.
patient(1).name = 'Chuck';
patient(1).age = 29;
patient(2).name = 'Sarah';
patient(2).age = 28;
% Assign to cell array
plist = {patient.name};
% Choose the name of a patient
choose_patient = 'Sarah';
% Find the chosen patient in the list
ix_patient = find(strcmp(plist, choose_patient))
% Get full entry for that patient
patient(ix_patient)