construct array name in script

New to MatLab by a month or so. I've looked through blogs and can't find and answer to this. I need to: 1) open a *.txt file which is comma delimited Nx3 'array' (I'm using uigetfile() for this) 2) pass the values to a Matlab array structure (I'm using csvread() for this) 3) Set the array structure name to the same as the name of the input file minus .txt (near is my problem) 4) write the array with the internal array name set to the input file name (I'm using save() for this)

My problem is I don't know how to construct the array name in script to pass onto the array written using the save() command.

Below is an elaboration with script segments:

% read a file into a variable selecting all files with a string '_element.txt' DbTitle = 'Generic title text' HeElements = uigetfile('*_element.txt', DbTitle) % HeElement is now a character string 'random_element.txt % remove '.txt' from the string HeLength = length(HeElements)-4 HeArrayName = strcat(HeElements(1:HeLength)) % HeArrayName now contains the filename without the '.txt' extension. This is the name I want assigned to the array eventually being saved to file. % Read array into variable HeArray = csvread(HeElements) % save array to a file save(HeFilename, 'HeArray')

The problem is the file that is saved, HeFileName, containes the proper array elements but with a literal name of the array being 'HeArray' with no quotes. I want the filename and array name to be the same, the string associated with the filename HeFileName without the extention ('He_element').

Thanks,

Alex

[Evan]

Formatted code:

% read a file into a variable selecting all files with a string '_element.txt'
DbTitle = 'Generic title text'
HeElements = uigetfile('*_element.txt', DbTitle)

% HeElement is now a character string 'random_element.txt
% remove '.txt' from the string
HeLength = length(HeElements)-4 HeArrayName = strcat(HeElements(1:HeLength)) 

% HeArrayName now contains the filename without the '.txt' extension.
% This is the name I want assigned to the array eventually being saved to
% file.

% Read array into variable
HeArray = csvread(HeElements)

% save array to a file
save(HeFilename, 'HeArray')

Answer 1

[Jos]

Hi Alex,

I think the following code using eval will do what you want

% read a file into a variable selecting all files with a string '_element.txt'
DbTitle = 'Generic title text'
HeFilename = uigetfile('*_element.txt', DbTitle)
% remove '.txt' from filename to get array name
HeArrayName = HeFilename(1:end-4);

% Read array into variable
eval([HeArrayName '= csvread(HeFilename)'])

% Save array to '.mat' file
eval(['save ' HeArrayName '.mat ' HeArrayName])

[Alex]

Thanks Jos! It worked perfectly! Being new to much of the functionality in MatLab, I'll have to review it to understand exactly why it worked. Apparently, eval can be used for some good:)

Thanks,

Alex