How to summon a double variable that it's name was stored in a string?

during my program I want to summon a double variable that it's name saved in a string before!How can do it?

Answer 1

[David Young]

Use eval. For example

xxx = 3;     % variable with value
varname = 'xxx';    % name of variable stored as a string

% ... other stuff ...

val_of_xxx = eval(varname);   % gets back value of xxx

But think carefully about whether you really need to do this. It's often the case that there's a better way to write your program, perhaps using structure arrays or cell arrays, that avoids having to store variable names as strings. If there is, it's usually much better to avoid using eval.

[Jan]

The EVAL approach is prone to errors and inefficient. David's suggestion touse a struct is *much* better:

Name = 'xxx'; S.(Name) = rand;

[Pouya Jamali]

Thanks a lot

Answer 2

[Daniel Shub]

Building on David's answer

xxx = 3;
varname = 'xxx';
val_of_xxx = eval(varname);

can be replaced with

data.xxx = 3;
varname = 'xxx';
val_of_xxx = data.(varname);

The advantage of the latter is it avoids the eval.

[Pouya Jamali]

Thanks a lot Dani:-)