Naming a structure with a string that was fetched through x=input(prompt)

My code looks like this so far:

prompt = 'What is the name of your project? '

% projectname becomes the entered string

projectname = input(prompt,'s')

% a structure with the string as name should be generated

projectname = struct()

Unfortunatly the name of the structure stays "projectname" and won't become the string.

Thanks for anything that might help.

[Stephen23]

"Unfortunatly the name of the structure stays "projectname" and won't become the string"

That is exactly what it should do. Magically creating variable names is slow, buggy, makes code complex and hard to debug. Read this to know more:

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

What you are doing now keeps your meta-data (project name) out of the code, which is the best way to write code. You should not mix your meta-data into your code.

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

You do not want to do that. It should be the contents of a variable that is flexible and not the name. Assuming you want to store some data for this project you could use the following approach

   M.projectname = input('What is the name of the project','s')
   M.data = cumsum(randi(10,1,15)) ;

   % and then for instance
   plot(M.data,'bo-') ; title(M.projectname)

[Maximilian Laurs]

This leads to direction i was thinking on. The problem i have is, that i don't want to change my projectname in the code by hand everytime a new project is conducted. In the end i have multiple measurements per project and would like to store them in the "projectname" structure. Then i could refer to them like:

projectname = 'PK06'

Measurement1

PK06.measurement1

Its pretty hard to describe for me. But thanks for your reply, it's definitly more helpful then just refering to the manual.

Have a nice day, Jos.

[Jos (10584)]

There are multiple ways to handle this

1) Search for the projectname inside a array of structs

M(1).projectname = 'PK06'
M(1).data = 1:10
M(2).projectname = 'PK12' 
M(2).data = [9 9 9]

AllProjects = {M.projectname}
CurrentProject = 'PK06'
tf = strcmpi(CurrentProject, AllProjects)
CurrentData = M(tf).data

2) Create a struct and use dynamic fieldnames (not recommended!)

M2.PK06.data = 1:4
M2.PK12.data = 9

CurrentProject = 'PK06'
if isfield(M2, CurrentProject)
  CurrentData = M2.(CurrentProject).data
else
  CurrentData = [] ;
end

[Maximilian Laurs]

There it is!

Thank you very much!

[Jos (10584)]

My pleasure. Have nice day too!

Answer 2

[Jan]

Naming variables dynamically is a bad programming style. It causes more troubles than it solves. An exhaustive summary of the large number of corresponding discussions in the forum: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval