Combine many vectors into one matrix (quickly!)

Hi guys. I have over 100 column vectors (all of the same length) that I would like to combine side-by-side into one matrix. I'm not sure how to do this in a loop. The vectors have names that are somewhat common among them. For example, their names take the form: "x_yyyyy", where x is a letter and there are 6 different values of x, and y is five digits, and there are 18 values of y. (So I have 6x18=108 vectors). E.g., I have C_02011, C_02012, H_02513, etc... So it might be possible to combine these using a loop with some sort of wildcarding, but I'm not really sure how to do this. Basically, I'm looking for a way to create one big array with all of these vectors without having to have lines of code going column by column. Meaning, A(:,1)=vector1, A(:,2)=vector2......A(:,108)=vector108 is NOT what I want to do!!

These 108 vectors are all that I have in my workspace, so maybe there's a way to just combine everything I have in my workspace into a matrix?

The actual goal of this question is to be able to export these columns into Stata. I thought if I had one big matrix, I could do xlswrite into Excel, then open this spreadsheet in Stata, but if there's a more direct way to take these 108 columns and quickly get them into Stata, that would be great to know!

Thanks for the input.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_create_variables_A1.2C_A2.2C....2CA10_in_a_loop.3F