copy looping matrixes into one 3-d matrix - matlab

Question

I have a list of text files that I would like to load, and then extract rows where they all overlap. The first column contains years and each data set spans a different chunk of years but they all overlap in the middle. In the end I would like to have a three dimensional matrix with the overlapping years in one matrix. My code keeps getting stuck at the line that I have commented out. I know its incorrect but could anyone tell me why it is incorrect?
clear all
name_list = {'Beijing';'GT';'soi';'naoi';'Sydney_Airport';'Los Angeles';'Paris';'Presque Isle'};
[m,n] = size(name_list);
files = dir('*.txt');
[m,n] = size(files);
for i=1:m
eval(['load ' files(i).name ' -ascii']);
vals{i} = load(files(i).name);
matrix = vals{i};
station = (files(i).name(1:end-4));
startyear(i) = min(matrix(:,1));
endyear(i) = max(matrix(:,1));
allstart = max(startyear);
allend = min(endyear);
%matrixnew(i) = matrix(allstart:allend,2:13,i);
end

Answer 1

Two problems here:
Your commented line %matrixnew(i) = matrix(allstart:allend,2:13,i); assumes that matrix is a 3-d array, but elsewhere you treat it as 2-d (and I believe that load always returns a 2-d array). This could be why you are getting the "Index exceeds matrix dimensions" error. Example:
>> foo = rand(10,10);
>> foo(2:10,3:4,2)
Index exceeds matrix dimensions.
Maybe you want matrix(allstart:allend,2:13)? But that won't work, because allstart contains a year, which presumably will not be a valid index for the array (a more likely cause of your error). Using the index that contains the smallest value would be closer to being correct, but I think it still won't work.
matrixnew refers to a single element of an array. You can't assign an array to an element of an array. grantnz is right that making matrixnew a cell array would fix this error, and I guess that in the end you could turn your cell array into 3-d array.
I think you are on the right track, but are missing a few pieces to making this work. One thing to consider is that it looks like you are trying to do everything in a single pass. I don't see how that can work. You need to real all files before you can decide which range of years to keep. So do it in multiple passes: first load all data from all files into a cell array, then figure out the range of years, then pull the data from each file for that range of years.