MATLAB: Get data from multi-level struct using strings

evalMATLABparforstruct

I need to read data into matlab where a text file specifies the structure and index of the data and another file contains the data itself.
Currently the implementation is done using an eval statement, e.g.
eval(['data.' dataName '=value;'])
I would like to use parfor instead since there are a many large files to process but parfor doesn't allow eval. I tried fixing it by replacing the eval statement with:
data.(dataName) = value;
The issue I'm running into is that dataName specifies multiple levels of a struct, e.g. dataName = 'a.b.c', which gives me an error.
Is there any way to make this work?

Best Answer

You can use setfield and getfield with nested fields. Unfortunately the help description is quite vague on how to do this, but all you need to do is supply all the fieldnames individually:
>> val  = 1;
>> name = 'a.b.c';
>> C = regexp(name,'\.','split');
>> data = setfield(struct(),C{:},val);
>> data.a.b.c
ans =  1
This is much more reliable than using eval, although it is possible that setting fields like this is also not permitted within a parfor loop, but it is worth a try.
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