dynamic naming of structures

If I have a variable x='name', how can I use x to build a structure with name 'name' that looks like:

name.a

name.b

No need to tell me about the hazards of dynamic variable naming.

Thanks.

[Stephen23]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/discussions/tips/849901-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

Answer 1

[DrK]

Actually, found my own answer:

x = 'name';

eval(sprintf('%s = struct;',x));

This creates a structure named 'name' and one can use the same eval format to add fields to it later.

[James Tursa]

How do you plan on using this variable downstream in your code? More "eval" statements everytime you want to use it?

[DrK]

That is a good point :-)

I guess that is what it takes, doesn't it?!

Is there a better way to do this?

[DrK]

Actually, I intend to form these structures into a table and later I can access then using the table. I guess this is analogous to the second level of structure that you proposed earlier, but since table was my plan all along, this eval method works better.

[Stephen23]

"Is there a better way to do this?"

Yes.

[DrK]

do tell

[James Tursa]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval?s_tid=ta_ans_results

[DrK]

Thanks for the light reading. I think I am going to take this in the direction of indexing instead.

Thanks again for your help.

Answer 2

[James Tursa]

Would it be acceptable to use x as a dynamic fieldname instead of the top level variable name? E.g.,

v.(x).a
v.(x).b

Answer 3

[DrK]

Not really. I know about the paranthesis around field names, but it creates another level of structure. The problem is that if I am creating the structure names inside my program, I don't know how to create the structures using those names.

Thanks for your response.