Changing the variable names for multiple tables within a loop that imports the data

I have imported a series of text files using the code posted below and the headers are 'x_________', 'x_______1' etc. I have been able to change the headers manually using T.Properties.VariableNames but for a set of 6 tables with 5 columns each this gets tedious, plus I will be importing multiple table sets like this. I want the same column headers across all of the tables (i.e. the variable names themselves are not dynamic). How can I incorporate this into the for loop in order to save time and space? Thanks!

for i=[0:10:50]
    filename = ['UCS_stress_',num2str(i),'.txt'];
    eval(['per_' num2str(i) '= readtable(filename)'])
end

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Using eval is a misdirection that forces you into writing slow, inefficient, complex code:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

It is much simpler and more efficient to use basic indexing, just like MATLAB was designed for:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/import_export/process-a-sequence-of-files.html

C = {cell array of the five table variable names};
V = 0:10:50; % those square brackets were superfluous.
N = numel(V)
T = cell(1,N); % preallocate cell array.
for k = 1:N
    fnm = sprintf('UCS_stress_%d.txt',V(k));
    tmp = readtable(fnm);
    tmp.Properties.VariableNames = C;
    T{k} = tmp; % basic indexing.
end

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/access-data-in-a-cell-array.html

[Amy M]

Hi Stephen, thanks for your help. I'm not sure if this is just me misunderstanding the code, but when I run this I only get one table as opposed to six.

[Stephen23]

"...but when I run this I only get one table as opposed to six."

Did you look inside the cell array T ? All six of the tables are stored in there.