Need help trying to figure out what the following notation means.

So, I am currently working on a project based on code written by someone else. Unfortunately, he didn't comment his code and is unavailable for any help. So my question is what is the following matlab notation?

for i=1:length(files)
        eval(['load ' files(i).name]);
        stuffs(i).name=files(i).name; 
        stuffs(i).h=bunchofh;        
        stuffs(i).nu=bunchofnu;

Like what is the stuffs(i).name syntax? Like, what is the name of such operation and what is it's purpose?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Sincerely, Shawn

[Stephen23]

This is awful code which uses eval for a trivial operation. Although beginners love using eval everywhere it is a very poor programming practice. Read this to know why:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/196952-how-to-create-new-variables-in-batches-with-strcat

Walter Roberson's answer shows the fast, efficient and robust way to perform this operation.

Answer 1

[TastyPastry]

It appears that stuffs is a structure array. The author is accessing the fields name, h, and nu in structure i in the array.

[Shawn]

Thanks for your help.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

The code should be rewritten as

for i=1:length(files)
      filedata = load(files(i).name);
      stuffs(i).name = files(i).name; 
      stuffs(i).h = filedata.bunchofh;        
      stuffs(i).nu = filedata.bunchofnu;

and so on.

As TastyPastry correctly remarked, this is a structure array; see http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/structures.html

The changes I made had to do with avoiding eval(), which has a lot of security and efficiency problems. There are very few good reasons to use eval().

[Shawn]

Thanks for your insight.