MATLAB: Extracting everything from a structure

fieldnamesMATLABstructstructures

Is there a built in function to extract everything from a structure?

For example if I have a structure:

struct_name.struct_element1 = 7;
struct_name.struct_element2 = 'abc';

Then later I want create variables for every element of struct_name but I'm unaware of how many elements are in "struct_name" and what their names are. I wrote the following code to solve my problem but I feel there might be a more elegant solution or a built in function:

struct_field_names = fieldnames(struct_name);
for k = 1:length(struct_field_names)
      eval([struct_field_names{k}, ' =...
          struct_name.',struct_field_names{k}, ';']);
end

Best Answer

Ahh I searched more rigorously and found this discussion:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/30533

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MATLAB: Changing name of structures

Hello Esteban,

I agree that the naming of these structures is unfortunate. You would be better off structuring your data like so:

data(1).prices = someData;
data(2).prices = someMoreData;
...
data(n).prices = nData;

Or even like this (depending on the content of prices)

prices(1) = someData; % SomeData can be a structure as long as follow-on indexes have same fields
prices(2) = someMoreData; % Must have same fields as index 1
...
prices(n) = nData;

If your data was one level deeper in your structures then you could also take advantage of dynamic field names.

To illustrate dynamic field referencing, let's assume you had your data nested under a parent structure called "data." You would then have fields within data called data.structure_portfolio1_prices, data.structure_portfolio2_prices, and so on. In this case, you could then reference them without resorting to eval, like so:

for idx = 1:10
   tempData = data.(['structure_portfolio' num2str(idx) '_prices']);
   % Do some operation on "tempData"
   ...
end

With dynamic fields, you reference (or create) fields using parentheses.

Hope this helps!

Paul Shoemaker

http://www.matlabinvesting.com

MATLAB: Create struct with nx1 dimension

StructName = struct('FieldName1',cell(2,1),'FieldName2',cell(2,1));
% or
StructName = struct('FieldName1',[],'FieldName2',[]);
StructName = repmat(StructName,2,1);

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Related Solutions

MATLAB: Changing name of structures

MATLAB: Create struct with nx1 dimension

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