How to change variable name in each loop iteration?

Say that I have a workspace containing vectors (or cells) with names 'test_1', 'test_b', and 'test_3'. I want to run a for loop (for j=1:3) which will in every iteration run over one of the three vectors in my workspace and perform a certain operation on it. For example:

 for j=1:3    
     test_?(:,1) = 10;
 end

This should acceses all elements in the first column of vector test_? and assign value of 10 to them. So my question is how to do this for varying end of the vector name (1, b, 3 in this particular case).

Thank you

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

This is a bad idea http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_create_variables_A1.2C_A2.2C....2CA10_in_a_loop.3F

But if you want to learn how to do it:

str={'1','b','2'}
for k=1:3    
   assignin('base',sprintf('test_%s', str{k}),10)
end