I have a variable called 'int' with alot of data in it. I would like to find a way to programically rename this variable with a user input. So I can query the user indentifcation information about the data, say the response is 'AA1', I want either rename the variable 'int' to 'AA1' or make 'AA1' a variable that is identical to int.
A problem using the input command arises because it allows the user to assign a value to an already created varialbe, instead of actually creating a variable name. Would using the eval function, or a variation of it, help me achieve this? Or is there an easier way?
Thanks!
Just for the record, int is a rather poor variable name choice.
That aside, you can do what you want as follows
say foo is the variable that holds a string that the user input. You can do the following:
% eliminate leading/trailing whitespace
foo = strtrim(foo);
a = regexp('[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*',foo));
if numel(a) == 0
fprintf('Sorry, %s is not a valid variable name in matlab\n', foo);
elseif a ~= 1
fprintf('Sorry, %s is not a valid variable name in matlab\n', foo);
elseif 2 == exist(foo,'var')
fprintf('Sorry, %s already in use as a variable name.');
else
eval([foo,' = int']);
end
Assuming int (and now foo) is a structure with field named bar, you can read bar as follows:
barVal = eval([foo,'.bar']);
This is all somewhat clunky.
An alternative approach, that is far less clunky is to use an associative array, and let the user store various values of int in the array. The Matlab approach for associative arrays is Maps. That would be my preferred approach to this problem. Here is an example using the same variables as above.
nameValueMap = containers.Map;
nameValueMap(foo) = int;
The above creates the association between the name stored in foo with the data in the variable int.
To get at the data, you just do the following:
intValue = nameValueMap(foo);
Related
I want to iteratively define a variable whose name is the concatenation of two strings.
In particular, the following code is meant to create a variable Uvel_spring that contains the values Uvel stored in the file spring_surface.mat :
seasons{1}='spring';
seasons{2}='summer';
seasons{3}='autumn';
seasons{4}='winter';
for ii=1:4
['Uvel_',char(seasons(ii))] = load([char(seasons(ii)),'_surface.mat'],...
'Uvel');
end
However, I get the following error:
An array for multiple LHS assignment cannot contain LEX_TS_STRING.
I solved it by using evalc:
for ii=1:4
evalc( sprintf(['Uvel_',char(seasons(ii)),'=','load(''',char(seasons(ii)),'_surface.mat'',',...
'''Uvel''',')']) );
end
However, it is horrible and I would like to improve the code.
Does someone have an alternative solution?
Use struct instead.
for ii=1:4
Uvel.(seasons{ii}) = load([seasons{ii},'_surface.mat'], 'Uvel');
end
You'll end up having those four seasons as the fields of Uvel. So you'll be accessing Uvel_spring as Uvel.spring and similarly for others.
I have a long list of variables in my workspace.
First, I'm finding the potential variables I could be interested in using the who function. Next, I'd like to loop through this list to find the size of each variable, however who outputs only the name of the variables as a string.
How could I use this list to refer to the values of the variables, rather than just the name?
Thank you,
list = who('*time*')
list =
'time'
'time_1'
'time_2'
for i = 1:size(list,1);
len(i,1) = length(list(i))
end
len =
1
1
1
If you want details about the variables, you can use whos instead which will return a struct that contains (among other things) the dimensions (size) and storage size (bytes).
As far as getting the value, you could use eval but this is not recommended and you should instead consider using cell arrays or structs with dynamic field names rather than dynamic variable names.
S = whos('*time*');
for k = 1:numel(S)
disp(S(k).name)
disp(S(k).bytes)
disp(S(k).size)
% The number of elements
len(k) = prod(S(k).size);
% You CAN get the value this way (not recommended)
value = eval(S(k).name);
end
#Suever nicely explained the straightforward way to get this information. As I noted in a comment, I suggest that you take a step back, and don't generate those dynamically named variables to begin with.
You can access structs dynamically, without having to resort to the slow and unsafe eval:
timestruc.field = time;
timestruc.('field1') = time_1;
fname = 'field2';
timestruc.(fname) = time_2;
The above three assignments are all valid for a struct, and so you can address the fields of a single data struct by generating the field strings dynamically. The only constraint is that field names have to be valid variable names, so the first character of the field has to be a letter.
But here's a quick way out of the trap you got yourself into: save your workspace (well, the relevant part) in a .mat file, and read it back in. You can do this in a way that will give you a struct with fields that are exactly your variable names:
time = 1;
time_1 = 2;
time_2 = rand(4);
save('tmp.mat','time*'); % or just save('tmp.mat')
S = load('tmp.mat');
afterwards S will be a struct, each field will correspond to a variable you saved into 'tmp.mat':
>> S
S =
time: 1
time_1: 2
time_2: [4x4 double]
An example writing variables from workspace to csv files:
clear;
% Writing variables of myfile.mat to csv files
load('myfile.mat');
allvars = who;
for i=1:length(allvars)
varname = strjoin(allvars(i));
evalstr = strcat('csvwrite(', char(39), varname, '.csv', char(39), ', ', varname, ')');
eval(evalstr);
end
I know that, inside a MATLAB function, inputname(k) will return the k-th argument iff the argument is a variable name. Is there any way to write some parsing code that can retrieve the full input argument when that argument is a structure, e.g. foo.bar ? The reason I want to be able to do this is that I'm writing some tools for generic use where the input could be either a named variable or a named structure element.
My primary intent is to be able to store and return the input argment(s) as part of a structure or other variable that the function returns. This is a 'chain of custody' feature which makes it easier for me or others to verify the source data sets used to generate the output data sets.
I don't want the user to have to self-parse externally, or to have to deal with some kludge like
function doit(name,fieldname)
if(exist('fieldname','var'))
name = name.(fieldname);
myinput = [inputname(1),inputname(2)];
else
myinput = inputname(1);
end
% do the function stuff
(I call this a kludge because it both requires the user to enter strange arguments and because it fouls up the argument sequence for functions with multiple inputs)
There is no support from the language to get the input names when passing structs. The reason is probably x.a is internally a call to subsref which returns a new variable, all context is lost. The only possibility you have is using the debug tools and parse the code. There is no other option.
function x=f(varargin)
[ST, I] = dbstack('-completenames', 1);
if numel(ST)>0
fid=fopen(ST(1).file,'r');
for ix=2:ST(1).line;fgetl(fid);end
codeline=fgetl(fid);
fclose(fid);
fprintf('function was called with line %s\n',codeline);
else
fprintf('function was called from base workspace\n');
end
end
From there you may try to parse the code line to get the individual argument names.
Far uglier than Daniel's approach, and probably will crash on the wrong OS, but here's a hack that works to retrieve the first argument; easily adjusted to retrieve all arguments.
[~,myname] = system('whoami');
myname = strtrim(myname(4:end)); % removes domain tag in my Windows envir
% sorry about " \' " fouling up SO's color parsing
myloc = ['C:\Users\' , myname , '\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2015a\History.xml'] ;
f = fopen(myloc,'r');
foo = fscanf(f,'%s');
fclose(f);
pfoo = findpat(foo,'myFunctionName');
% just look for the last instance
namstart = find(foo(pfoo(end):(pfoo(end)+30)) =='(',1) +pfoo(end);
% catch either ')' or ','
namend(1) = find(foo((namstart):end)== ')',1) -2 +namstart;
if numel(find(foo((namstart):end)== ',',1)),
namend(2) = find(foo((namstart):end)== ',',1) -2 +namstart;
end
thearg = foo(namstart:(min(namend)) );
Is it possible to refer back to/access the names of variables (say nx1 arrays) that make up a matrix? I wish to access them to insert there names into a plot or figure (as a text) that I have created. Here is an example:
A = [supdamp, clgvlv,redamp,extfanstat,htgvlv,occupied,supfanspd]
%lots of code here but not changing A, just using A(:,:)'s
%drawn figure
text(1,1,'supdamp')
...
text(1,n,'supfanspd')
I have failed in an attempt create a string named a with their names in so that I could loop through a(i,1), then use something like text(1,n,'a(i,1)')
Depending on your problem, it might make sense to use structures with dynamical field names.
Especially if your data in the array have some meaning other than just entries of a matrix in linear algebra sense.
# name your variables so that your grandma could understand what they store
A.('supdamp') = supdamp
A.('clgvlv') = clgvlv
...
fieldsOfA = fieldnames(a)
for n = 1 : numel(fieldsOfA )
text(1, n, fieldsOfA{n})
end
I'm interested in the general problem of accessing a field which may be buried an arbitrary number of levels deep in a containing structure. A concrete example using two levels is below.
Say I have a structure toplevel, which I define from the MATLAB command line with the following:
midlevel.bottomlevel = 'foo';
toplevel.midlevel = midlevel;
I can access the midlevel structure by passing the field name as a string, e.g.:
fieldnameToAccess = 'midlevel';
value = toplevel.(fieldnameToAccess);
but I can't access the bottomlevel structure the same way -- the following is not valid syntax:
fieldnameToAccess = 'midlevel.bottomlevel';
value = toplevel.(fieldnameToAccess); %# throws ??? Reference to non-existent field 'midlevel.bottomlevel'
I could write a function that looks through fieldnameToAccess for periods and then recursively iterates through to get the desired field, but I am wondering if there's some clever way to use MATLAB built-ins to just get the field value directly.
You would have to split the dynamic field accessing into two steps for your example, such as:
>> field1 = 'midlevel';
>> field2 = 'bottomlevel';
>> value = toplevel.(field1).(field2)
value =
foo
However, there is a way you can generalize this solution for a string with an arbitrary number of subfields delimited by periods. You can use the function TEXTSCAN to extract the field names from the string and the function GETFIELD to perform the recursive field accessing in one step:
>> fieldnameToAccess = 'midlevel.bottomlevel';
>> fields = textscan(fieldnameToAccess,'%s','Delimiter','.');
>> value = getfield(toplevel,fields{1}{:})
value =
foo