How can I have an option for SAVE to skip saving a variable if it doesn't exist in the workspace?

I am saving a sizeable number of variables from my workspace into a MAT-file. However, some of these variables may not exist at times. In that case, SAVE command returns an error. I want to know if I can pass an option into SAVE such that it simply skips a variable from its list if the variable doesn't exist in the workspace.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The ability to skip variables that do not exist while using the SAVE command is not available in MATLAB.

As a workaround, you can compile a cell-array with the names of the variables to be saved. The script can then loop through the array and save (with the -append option) the variable only if it exists.

x = 3.4; y = 'abcxyz'; z = struct('key1','value1','key2','value2');

variableList = {'x','y','z','w'};

for variableIndex = 1:length(variableList)

     if exist(variableList{variableIndex})

         if exist('myDataFile.mat')

            save('myDataFile.mat',variableList{variableIndex},'-append')

         else

             save('myDataFile.mat',variableList{variableIndex})

         end

     end

end