How do I multiply a matrix and a column vector of variables ?

I have a matrix 'F' (3 * 20 double) and a cell-type 'ans' (20*1) consisting of variables of the form (1,x,y,z,xy,yx,...). The 'ans' is an output of a function called Poly_List that gives us a list of polynomials. I wanted to multiply F and ans to get a system of equations and use that to get the function

f = @(t,y) F * ans

which I will later use to solve ODEs. This gives me the error

Operator '*' is not supported for operands of type 'cell'.

I thought converting it into type double will help. But when I run

var = str2double(ans)

then var is simply consisting of NaN instead of the variables. Can someone please help?

Answer 1

[Torsten]

Try a combination of str2sym and cell2sym (I don't know the class of "ans" from your description) to convert ans to a symbolic column vector "Ans". Then use

f = matlabFunction(F * Ans) 

to convert the matrix-vector-product to a normal function handle.