MATLAB: How to access a table column using a string of the column name

Question

If you have a table called table1 with column names X1, X2, X3, how can you access a column X1 with the variable v =  'X1'?

Answer 1

This can be done using dynamic field indexing.

>> table1.('X1');

If you have a variable that contains the string.

>> v = 'X1';
>> table1.(v);

Note: This indexing also works for dataset arrays and structs.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2005/12/13/use-dynamic-field-references/