How to use cell value as a variable or How to convert cell to double?

I have data in excel, I am reading that data in MATLAB. I want to use text in excel as a variable name to assign fixed set of data values which also in same excel. but I am facing the problem as the text from excel has class cell.

So, how can I use cell values (Time, Temperatue....etc) as a variable in MATLAB?

[Stephen23]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/discussions/tips/849901-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

Answer 1

[Manikanta Aditya]

Hi @Ankush Aher,

Follow the below steps:

1. Read Data from Excel: Use readtable or xlsread to read data from Excel into MATLAB.
2. Extract Text and Data: Extract the text and data from the table or cell array.
3. Convert Text to Variable Names: Use eval or dynamic field names in a structure to assign data to variables.

% Step 1: Read data from Excel
data = readtable('yourfile.xlsx');

% Step 2: Extract text and data
variableNames = data.Properties.VariableNames;
dataValues = table2array(data);

% Step 3: Convert text to variable names and assign data
for i = 1:length(variableNames)
    eval([variableNames{i} ' = dataValues(:, i);']);
end

% Example usage
disp(Time); % Assuming 'Time' is one of the column headers in your Excel file
disp(Temperature); % Assuming 'Temperature' is another column header

This code reads the data from an Excel file, extracts the column headers as variable names, and assigns the corresponding data to these variables. Make sure to replace 'yourfile.xlsx' with the actual name of your Excel file.

I hope this helps.

[Ankush Aher]

Thank you very much for your quick response @Manikanta Aditya. It is working and it solved my problem.

[Stephen23]

Best avoided:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/discussions/tips/849901-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

One much better approach is to simply access the data directly from the table:

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

[Ankush Aher]

Thank you for your response @Stephen23 will try this one also.

[Manikanta Aditya]

Thanks @Ankush Aher, @Stephen23

[Walter Roberson]

Using readtable() is certainly the recommended approach here!