Input a range of numbers with strings as well

Here is what I use right now:

m = input('Number?      ');
for ind = length(m):-1:1
filename = ['Data#' num2str(m(ind)) '.txt'];
Output Data{ind}= importfile(filename);
end

And this serves my purpose to input a range of numbers like [1:5] or [2,6,3,5]. But now I would like to be able to also use strings in the input along with the range such as [1:3,2R, 4 Word, 10] in order to input these text files: Data#1.txt, Data#2.txt, Data#3.txt, Data#2R.txt, Data#4 Word.txt, and Data#10.txt I know that cells allow me to have mixed arrays but I cannot figure out away to allow the input of 1:3 to be {1, 2, 3}. Can anyone help me achieve what I am trying to do?

Answer 1

[Matt J]

You could use myParser below to get the relevant inputs in string form. For example

   >> m=myParser('1:3 2R 4 Word 10')

   m = 

    '1'    '2'    '3'    '2R'    '4'    'Word'    '10'

and now you can do things like

filename = ['Data#' m{i} '.txt'];

simlar to what you had before.

    function m=myParser(str)

        C=textscan(str,'%s');
        C=C{1};

        for i=1:length(C)

            c=str2num(C{i});

            if ~isempty(c)
               C{i}=num2cell(c); 
            end

        end

        m=[C{:}];

        for i=1:length(m)

           if isnumeric(m{i})
               m{i}=num2str(m{i});
           end

        end

    end

[k5jyw153vcxb]

Yes, this has done exactly what I wanted. Thank you