Address a variable using the name of another variable

Greetings. I`m using Matlab to analyse some of my biology experiments and I`m currently having problems. Since I`m using a lot of strange variables and a lot of data, I`ll summarise my problems in this example:

% create a 1x2 cell with chars

list{1,1}='A';
list{1,2}='B';

%create a simple vector

testA=[1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10];

%get the mean

mean_testA=mean(testA);

What I want is to be able to use the char in “list” to address testA.

Something like mean_testA=mean(test list{1,1})

Thank you!

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

Sounds like you probably want to look into using structures with dynamic fieldnames

http://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2013b/matlab/matlab_prog/generate-field-names-from-variables.html

Also, in the FAQ:

A1 A2 An

Answer 2

[Matt J]

It seems to make the most sense to put your actual data in test_list{i}, e.g.,

 test_list{1,1}=testA;

Then your command mean_testA=mean(test list{1,1}) will do exactly what you want. You can also do things like

 S.A=testA;
 S.B=whatever;

 testlist=fieldnames(S);

 mean_testA = mean(S.(testlist{1}))
 mean_testB = mean(S.(testlist{2}))