Dynamically Make a Variable Name (2024)

"My issue is that if someone wants to load multiple files, the variable is called AllPlotInformation for every file so it gets overwritten"

Then you should be asking about that:

" I would like a unique variable name for the struct so it will appear in the workspace when multiple files are loaded."

Ugh, do NOT do that.

Unless you really want to force yourself into writing slow, complex, inefficient, obfuscated, buggy code that is hard to debug:

You have well-designed data (every MAT file uses the same variable names) which allows you to easily write efficient and robust code to process that data. Do not ruin that good data design with dynamic variable names!

% create sme example data and files

AllPlotInformation = 1;

save file1 AllPlotInformation

AllPlotInformation = 2;

save file2 AllPlotInformation

s1 = load('file1')

s2 = load('file2')

P = 'absolute or relative path to where the files are saved';

S = dir(fullfile(P,'*.mat'));

for k = 1:numel(S)

F = fullfile(S(k).folder,S(k).name);

S(k).API = load(F).AllPlotInformation;

end

API = vertcat(S.API) % optional

S(2).name % filename

S(2).API % AllPlotInformation