MATLAB: How does MATLAB convert column names to valid variable names

MATLABnamevalidvariable

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You can use the "makeValidName" function to do this:

>> [validNames, modified] = matlab.lang.makeValidName('hello&world')
>> [validNames, modified] = matlab.lang.makeValidName('hello world')

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.lang.makevalidname.html

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MATLAB: Renaming files using MATLAB

From MATLAB, you can use the "movefile" function to rename files on your machine:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/movefile.html

For more information on managing files and folders in MATLAB see this documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/matlab_env/manage-files-and-folders.html

Alternatively, you can use the "system" command which executes on the local operating system.

On Windows using CMD, the "rename" command works like this:

C:> rename  file_path  new_name
C:> rename  C:\Temp\file1.txt file2.txt

So in MATLAB, from the directory with the file you could execute:

>> system("rename " + "old_name.txt" + " " + "new_name.txt")

If the file names contain spaces, this can confuse the operating system, so a more robust approach is to wrap each file name in double quotes like this:

>> system("rename " + '"' + "old name.txt" + '" "' + "new name.txt" + '"')

This produces a system command like this:

C:> rename "old name.txt" "new name.txt"

To use MATLAB variables for the old and new file names you can use these MATLAB commands:

>> old_path_to_file = "C:\Temp\test a.txt";

>> new_filename = "test b.txt";

>> cmd = "rename " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';

>> system(cmd);

On a Linux or macOS (Unix) system, this would be:

>> old_path_to_file = "/tmp/test a.txt";
>> new_filename = "test b.txt";
>> cmd = "mv " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';
>> system(cmd);

MATLAB: How to use custom date labels for the x-axis in MATLAB plots

It is more convenient to format the tick labels using the "XTick", "XTickLabelMode" and "XTickLabel" properties of the axis object (vs. using "datetick" function):

>> figure
>> box on
>>
>> % Start, end and number of ticks...
>> startDate = 7.3457e+05;
>> endDate = 7.3458e+05;
>> numbertick = ceil(endDate - startDate);
>>
>> % Plot them
>> xData = linspace(startDate, endDate, numbertick);
>> plot(xData,ones(size(xData)));
>>
>> %%Modify the axes properties
>> set(gca, 'XTick',xData)
>> set(gca, 'TickDir', 'out');
>> set(gca, 'XTickLabelMode', 'auto');
>>
>> % Modifying the labels
>> labels = get(gca, 'XTickLabel');
>>
>> for i = 1:length(labels)
>>     if i == 1 || i == ceil(length(labels)/2) || i == length(labels)
>>         labels{i} = datestr(xData(i), 'mm/dd');
>>     else
>>         labels{i} = '';
>>     end
>> end
>>
>> set(gca, 'XTickLabel', labels)

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Related Solutions

MATLAB: Renaming files using MATLAB

MATLAB: How to use custom date labels for the x-axis in MATLAB plots

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